MONDAY, 4.00PM
MILITIA loyal to former Congolese dictator Denis Sassou Nguesso fired heavy weapons at the parliament in Brazzaville on Monday, after sporadic fighting resumed in the Congo capital on Sunday.
Violating a ceasefire, the rebels are firing to prevent the swearing-in of the constitutional council, which is to decide whether elections scheduled for July 27 will in fact take place, aides to President Pascal Lissouba said. “The constitional council will be sworn in before the assembled parliament,” the presidential cabinet director Claudine Munari said. “Sassou Nguesso wants to stop that, and they are firing heavy weapons on the parliament.”
The council’s office, set up last Thursday, was criticised the following day by Sassou Nguesso’s radio station. The broadcast said Lissouba, whose mandate expires on August 31, was planning to ask the constitutional council for a ruling on the Congolese crisis, “in particular on prolonging his mandate.”
Sassou Nguesso is opposed to an extension of Lissouba’s mandate and is demanding that the head of state hand over his powers to a national unity government to rule the country until presidential elections.
The election was thrown into question by the violence that has engulfed the Congolese capital since June 5.
MONDAY, 5.30PM
SIX artillery shells fired from the Congolese capital Brazzaville struck Tshatshi military camp in Kinshasa, capital of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha was reported as saying on Monday.