Four people, including three police officers, are now known to have died and about 20 injured in rioting ahead of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) landmark elections, police said on Friday.
Witnesses had earlier reported that one man had died in the violence, which occurred on Thursday outside a stadium where leading presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba was holding his final campaign rally.
”Four are dead — three police officers and a civilian — and there are around 20 people injured, most of them police officers,” Colonel Dominique Manganja told Agence France-Presse.
”One police officer was shot dead, another was stoned to death and the body of a third was burnt. We don’t know how he died,” Manganja said. He said he did not know how the civilian had died either.
The violence involved police, youths and members of Bemba’s security detail. It came just three days before the vast central African country is set to hold its first multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections since declaring independence from Belgium in 1960.
Manganja said there had been significant material damage in Kinshasa around the rally by Bemba, who is one of the DRC’s four vice-presidents and a leading rival in Sunday’s polls to current head of state Joseph Kabila.
”Five police stations have been stoned or ransacked and a petrol station was partially destroyed. Several places were vandalised or burnt. The headquarters of the national media authority, a church, a studio and several houses were looted,” he said.
Manganja said the police had been instructed to show restraint to avoid a more serious flare-up.
Another police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bemba’s security staff were partially to blame for the human casualties.
”If armed reinforcements or the military had intervened there could have been a major clash with Bemba’s military guard. They didn’t hesitate to fire at the police.”
A rival of Bemba’s in the presidential election, also a vice-president, fiercely criticised Thursday’s rioting.
”It is unacceptable that on the eve of the elections people are losing their lives because of the ideas or the behaviour of others … I will ask for the perpetrators to be punished,” Azaraias Ruberwa told a meeting in the south-eastern city of Lubumbashi.
The run-up to the elections, which are designed to cement the DRC’s peace process, has been marred by ruthless campaigning and violent protests, as arch foes vie for political office.
On Wednesday three armed men killed the mother of a candidate for Parliament, in his presence, and seriously injured his sister.
On Tuesday afternoon, some 500 supporters of veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi clashed with security forces in Kinshasa during a protest against the elections, which their leader is boycotting.
The United Nations, which is monitoring the polls, said at the time the problems were not sufficiently serious to prevent the elections taking place. — Sapa-AFP