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.
Meanwhile, a diplomat in Bujumbura said Joseph Kabila, son of Laurent Kabila, had also been shot and killed.
?He even died before his father,” said the diplomat who asked not to be named.
Kabila’s death has been confirmed by Britain, Belgium and France, but had not been officially announced in Kinshasa by midday Wednesday.
Rebel and intelligence sources in the Ugandan capital Kampala also said that they had had reports of Joseph’s death.
According to the Belgian news agency, the shooting incident followed Kabila senior’s order to Joseph to arrest former deputy defence minister Colonel Dieudonne Kayembe, whom the president had just sacked.
Kayembe reacted by pulling out his gun and shooting the president, according to the news agency.
In the wake of the shooting, the DRC army tightened security and sealed off borders of the vast central African state, appealing to the population to remain calm.
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 Namibian government Wednesday said it troops would remain in defensive positions in the DRC.
Namibian troops have been fighting alongside the DRC army and troops from Angola and Zimbabwe against rebels backed by Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers.
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