AN overnight curfew has brought an uneasy calm to Kinshasa as uncertainty reigns after the shooting of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Laurent Kabila, reportedly killed by his own bodyguard in an apparent coup attempt.
Officials in the capital made no public statement as to the fate or whereabouts of the president following the shooting at Kabila’s official residence in the capital.
However, the army has tightened security and sealed off borders of the vast central African state, appealing to the population to remain calm.
Citing two “very reliable” sources, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said that Kabila was “dead, killed by his own bodyguard.” Belgium is the former colonial power in the war-ravaged DRC.
Just moments before the ministerial statement, Belgian public radio RTBF reported from Kinshasa that Kabila had been shot in the back and leg by one of his own security guards and transported by helicopter to a hospital in Kinshasa.
The French foreign ministry later confirmed the Belgian statement, but gave no details except that the situation was again calm in Kinshasa, whose streets were deserted late Tuesday amid the government-imposed curfew and torrential rain.
The United States said it believed Kabila had been assassinated and urged combatants in the central African country’s civil war not to interfere.
The Belga news agency here said that one of Kabila’s top military aides, Colonel Eddy Kapend, had taken power in Kinshasa, at least temporarily.
Western diplomats in Kigali, the capital of neighbouring Rwanda, said Kabila – who ousted dictator Mobuto Sese Seko in a May 1997 rebellion – had been the target of a coup attempt.
But DRC Interior Minister Gaetan Kakudji, who said the president himself had ordered the curfew on the capital, later implicitly denied the reports. In Brussels, the DRC’s ambassador to Belgium, Albert Kisonga, said Kabila was indeed alive and still in control.
The main group of rebels who have been fighting Kabila since an uprising in August 1998 accused Colonel Kapend himself, along with other top officers backing Kabila, of staging a coup to topple their boss.
Kabila, who seized power in 1997, has fought a rebellion backed by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi for last two and a half years. – AFP