More than 100 people were killed in two days of heavy fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital Kinshasa, hospital officials said on Sunday, as diplomats expressed fears for the country’s fledgling democracy.
Government forces restored order to DRC’s sprawling riverside capital late on Friday after routing fighters loyal to defeated presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba, who fled to safety in the South African embassy.
Hospital morgues were overflowing with dead bodies and doctors struggled to cope with a stream of wounded arriving for treatment after heavy machine gun fire and mortar explosions rocked the central African state’s capital for two days.
”We have more than 90 [(bodies]. They were coming in all night,” said an official at the morgue of the main Mama Yemo Hospital, as soldiers dragged in two more corpses. ”Many of them are unidentified. We are in the process of sorting through.”
Around 20 names, including soldiers and civilians, were posted outside the morgue of the another hospital in Kinshasa.
It was the first violence in the capital since a presidential run-off in October which Bemba lost to President Joseph Kabila. The polls were supposed to turn the page on a 1998 to 2003 war which killed nearly four million people, mainly from hunger and disease, but have left a legacy of bitterness after Bemba alleged fraud.
Doctors at the Mama Yemo hospital said international agencies had yet to provide the medical supplies they needed.
”Just now a guy came in with a bullet in his neck,” doctor Mbwebwe Kabamba told Reuters by telephone. ”We are running out of everything. We’ve had a lot of promises, but so far we haven’t received these materials.”
Along Kinshasa’s main boulevard, which saw some of the worst fighting, United Nations peacekeepers began marking off unexploded munitions to prevent further injuries.
Concern
Analysts and diplomats expressed concern. Bordering nine other nations, thr DRC is seen as a potential democratic lynchpin for war-ravaged central Africa.
The DRC’s general prosecutor issued an arrest warrant on Friday accusing Bemba, the leader of the parliamentary opposition after he was elected as senator earlier this year, of high treason for starting this week’s violence.
South African officials said Bemba’s presence in the embassy was temporary and he had not asked for asylum.
”If Bemba is forced to leave, or they persist with some show trial, it’s a strong signal that Kabila doesn’t really have a commitment to democracy or political opposition,” one Western diplomat said, adding the violence could have been avoided.
Bemba is overwhelmingly popular in Kinshasa and the country’s lingala-speaking west. The president draws most of his support from the distant, Swahili-speaking east.
Many members of Bemba’s Movement for the Liberation of Congo are in hiding.
”The opposition was already weak even when Bemba was there to keep them together,” said Jason Stearns, a senior central Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group. ”It could fall apart. There’s no one really to replace Bemba.” – Reuters