Sporadic clashes continued on Saturday in the Republic of Congo capital, Brazzaville, between a diehard militia group and government forces, a day after fighting left 60 militiamen dead, according to the army.
Witnesses said that members of the Ninja militia — the last of Congo’s feared armed groups that served in the 1980s and ’90s as private armies, who have refused to fall in line with a disarmament programme — burned down a police station in Brazzaville on Friday.
“I saw with my own eyes the Ninjas burn down the police station,” one witness said.
“They told us that they have no problems with the population, but with the military soldiers,” he said.
Shots could still be heard Saturday in Brazzaville’s southwestern neighbourhood of Kinsoundi, where the police station was burned down on Friday.
The Republic of the Congo is the smaller, separate, state to the northwest of the vast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa.
Radio Congo said late on Saturday that government forces with helicopters had conducted mopping-up operations against Ninja elements who had retreated to the west of the town late Saturday.
An army communique read over the air said the army had “complete control of the situation following disturbances perpetrated by armed bandits in certain districts of Brazzaville.”
All necessary measures had been taken to ensure public security, it said.
The statement also reassured the international community that the military would restore the authority of the state throughout the country.
A military official told AFP on Saturday that the Ninjas, led by Pastor Frederik Bitsangou (alias Ntumi), were still attempting to take over the Kinsoundi neighbourhood, from where most of the rebels originate.
“Public forces, which include the army, national guard, and police, are carrying out vigorous actions to wipe out the Ninjas,” he said.
The Ninja militia is estimated to number in the hundreds, while most other groups, including President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s own Cobra militia, disbanded after signing a ceasefire in 1999 aimed at ending a decade of successive civil wars.
As the fighting spread to Kinsoundi, some 20 kilometres from the city centre, residents fled in panic.
Nearly 50 000 people have been displaced since fighting flared up in the Pool region, to the south and west of the capital, when the government began hunting down the Ninjas in March.
Some 20 000 of the displaced have found refuge in cities, including the capital, but thousands of others have fled to surrounding forests.
Until 1999, the majority of Brazzaville’s Ninjas took Kinsoundi as their home, as it is close to the Pool’s forest region, where rebels often fight government forces.
Now it is one of the capital’s most damaged neighbourhoods, along with the western neighbourhood of Moukondo, which emerged from Friday’s fighting with dozens of burned houses, cars, and stores.
In Moukondo’s southern side, which borders the country’s Maya-Maya international airport, a jeep allegedly burned by Ninjas lay abandoned on the road, with charred human remains visible.
Deeper into Moukondo’s residential area, the Ninjas seem to have targeted the homes of army officers, police, and political officials, witnesses said.
Life was slowly beginning to return to normal, after police chief Jean Francois Ndenguet called late on Friday for residents to return to their homes.
“First I’m going to see if security conditions are fulfilled for a definitive return,” one woman said. “Otherwise, I’ll stay with friends in Moungali.”
“I wasn’t able to return to my house in La Base to take stock of the state of my house,” one man, who called himself Eric, said. “The soldiers authorise exits, but don’t let anyone in.
“They’re on the brink of war,” he said. – AFP