KINSHASA - Government forces defeated what diplomats called a coup attempt against President Joseph Kabila yesterday, battling attackers at military installations and television headquarters in the Congolese capital.
The assault, waking the crowded city to gunfire, represented the first major threat to a year-old power-sharing government meant to reunify and stabilise Africa's third-largest nation after a five-year-old war that killed an estimated 3 million.
Fighters loyal to Congo's late Cold War dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, were among those behind the attempt, British Ambassador Jim Atkinson told The Associated Press.
The coup attempt began early yesterday morning and lasted through four hours of gunfire.
Shooting eased by late morning, with the coup attempt apparently contained by loyalist troops.
Kabila was believed to be in the country yesterday, but his whereabouts were unclear.
"I have it on good authority that he's safe," Atkinson said.
Authorities said the simultaneous pre-dawn attacks targeted an army camp near Kabila's offices, a military airport, a naval shipyard on the Congo river and the national radio and television headquarters.
Congolese forces apprehended 12 assailants, government spokesman Vital Kamerhe said - adding that untold numbers of the civilian-clothed attackers disappeared into the city with their weapons.
He said the battle killed one Congo soldier and injured two others.
Kamerhe and Interior Minister Theophile Mbemba both refused to comment on diplomats' accounts of the attack, which they said was linked to the recent discovery of an arms cache buried in Kinshasa.
During the fight, authorities seized six rocket-propelled grenades, two mortar launchers, 30 grenades, 75 AK-47 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of various ammunition, the army said.
"We have the situation under control," Kamerhe told The Associated Press after the fighting subsided.
Congo officials said the attempt did not harm the government of national unity meant to move Congo beyond its ruinous 1998-2003 war, which saw foreign-backed rebels take control of the east and much of the north.
"This event will not destabilise the government. Everybody's still working together," Mbemba told reporters of representatives from Congo's wartime government, three rebel movements and the political class working in Congo's power-sharing administration.
Diplomats believed the attempt was the work of soldiers loyal to Mobutu, Congo's three-decade ruler.
Thousands of Mobutu soldiers fled across the Congo River to Brazzaville, capital of neighbouring Republic of Congo, after Mobutu was ousted in 1997.
Mobutu died of prostate cancer in September 1997 while in exile in Morocco.
"They've infiltrated into Kinshasa with weapons, presumably over the past days and weeks," Atkinson, the British envoy said.
"This morning they began attacking at various places."
Shooting was heard around Kinshasa's Congo River port, directly across from Brazzaville.
A Congo army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the attackers had come from Brazzaville overnight, passing a security post where soldiers were asleep on duty.
The officer spoke at an office building downtown that was surrounded by about 100 soldiers.
Security forces believed some of the attackers were inside, the officer said.
The building was near the US Embassy and the headquarters of the UN mission in Congo.
Residents said shooting had been heavy in the area during the fighting.
Kabila has been in power since January 2001, when bodyguards assassinated then-ruler Laurent Kabila, Joseph's father.
The United Nations has some 10 800 peacekeepers in Congo, helping the transitional government regain control of its territory and prepare for elections to be held in less than two years.
www.namibian.com.na/E-mail this article