Heavy fighting claims more than 100 lives in Congo

MORE than 100 people were killed in two days of heavy fighting in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, hospital officials said yesterday, as diplomats expressed fears for the fledgling democracy.

Government forces restored order to Democratic Republic of Congo’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.

“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 1998-2003 war which killed nearly four million people, mainly from hunger and disease, but have left a legacy of bitterness after Bemba alleged fraud.

Along Kinshasa’s main boulevard, which saw some of the worst fighting, UN peacekeepers began marking off unexploded munitions to prevent further injuries.