United Nations soldiers fired on rioters, killing two people, as violent protests against the international peacekeepers swept the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday.
Mobs attacked UN compounds across the country, blaming the international mission for failing to stop the capture of an eastern town by renegade fighters.
In the capital, Kinshasa, police fired into the air and volleyed teargas at a massive mob which surged around the UN headquarters in the city centre, hurling rocks and chanting: ”The state is dead! We will punish the United Nations ourselves!”
Two rioters were shot dead by UN guards after a crowd smashed down the main door of a logistics base and stormed the building. A UN official said the guards had acted ”for reasons of legitimate self-defence”.
State television said seven people had died, but the toll could not be independently verified. The broadcaster also said the transport minister, Joseph Olenghankoy, had been injured.
Thousands of protesters burned tyres and smashed cars as UN workers huddled inside bases across the sprawling central African country, taking the brunt of Congolese fury at the fall of Bukavu to two rebel commanders.
”It’s crazy out there,” a UN staffer told Reuters from inside the Kinshasa compound.
The capture of Bukavu, on the Rwandan border, is the latest blow to a peace process that was supposed to end DRC’s six-year civil war, in which more than 3,5-million died through fighting and war-related famine and disease.
Fighters loyal to two renegade commanders seized the town on Wednesday, provoking outrage across the country as Congolese accused the 10 800-strong UN mission to the CDRC of being complicit with the renegades.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, condemned the capture of Bukavu and called on the region’s warring parties to abide by an earlier ceasefire. But the UN defended its troops’ inaction against the armed factions which took Bukavu, saying the force’s mandate did not extend to fighting battles.
About 1 060 UN peacekeepers are deployed in and around Bukavu, while the regular Congolese army is thought to have some 1 000 soldiers on the ground. The town was seized by around 4 000 renegade soldiers.
Two former Congolese rebels ordered their troops to advance on the eastern town after complaining that the government-appointed military commander in the region was persecuting members of their ethnic community, the Banyamulenge.
The commanders on Thursday pledged to withdraw troops from Bukavu and allow UN peacekeepers to take control. But an outbreak of looting and rape which followed the capture has increased resentment against the international peacekeepers.
Three women — including a 15-year-old and a pregnant woman — were treated by UN medical staff after being raped on Thursday.
Residents threw stones at UN vehicles and threatened to lynch UN workers in Bukavu’s Kadugu neighbourhood, which was especially hard hit by the renegade soldiers.
One of the renegade commanders, Brigadier General Laurent Nkunda, pledged allegiance to the transitional government in Kinshasa, led by President Joseph Kabila, but called for the appointment of a new military commander in the region.
On Wednesday night, President Kabila declared a state of emergency across Congo, and accused Rwanda of colluding in the capture of Bukavu.
Some protesters called Kabila a traitor, crying: ”Kabila is an accomplice of Rwanda.”
Both General Nkunda and his fellow renegade commander Colonel Jules Mutebusi were commanders of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, a Rwandan-backed rebel group.
But Rwanda’s foreign minister, Charles Muligande, speaking on state-run Rwandan radio, denied the allegations.
The war in the DRC started in 1998 when Rwanda backed Congolese rebels, accusing DRC’s government of harbouring militias responsible for the 1994 genocide. – Guardian Unlimited Â