UN troops move to remove diplomats trapped by Congo gun-battle

GUNFIRE broke out yesterday near the home of a leading Congolese politician, prompting the UN to send scores of peacekeepers in armoured vehicles to remove foreign diplomats trapped inside.

The incident followed the announcement of inconclusive election results.

President Joseph Kabila failed to win an outright majority in Congo’s first balloting in more than four decades. He will face Mr Bemba, who is a vice-president in the country’s transitional regime, in a second-round of voting.

UN spokesman Jean-Tobias Okala said 150 UN troops in 20 armoured personnel carriers were to take the foreign envoys from Jean-Pierre Bemba’s home, where they were meeting the candidate when fighting erupted outside his compound.

“An operation has been launched to extract the ambassadors,” he said.

The fighting followed gun battles on Sunday between soldiers loyal to Mr Kabila and armed supporters of Mr Bemba, in which five people were killed, UN sources said. Yesterday Mr Bemba’s spokesmen said heavily armed members of Mr Kabila’s presidential guard had attacked the candidate’s followers around his riverside house, the presidency said they acted to deal with what they saw as an armed threat to Mr Kabila.

Some Kabila spokesmen said Mr Bemba’s followers, some of whom wore red bandanas, had fired on the presidency.

Despite his failure to win an outright majority in Congo’s historic elections, Mr Kabikla called the results “a great victory”.

With 16.9 million votes cast in the July 30 ballot, Mr Kabila won 45% of the votes against Mr Bemba’s 20%, said Electoral Commission chairman Apollinaire Malu Malu. A second round will be held on October 29.

The sounds of firing from automatic rifles and heavier machine guns were heard near Mr Bemba’s compound by reporters. Flaming objects could be seen flying overhead.

“Yesterday’s incident does not bode well for a good climate for a second round of elections,” Jason Stearns, analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank, said.

The elections were meant to draw a line under a decade of conflict in the former Zaire, where a 1998-2003 war sparked a humanitarian crisis that killed more than four million people. But they have underlined deep political and ethnic divisions.