Three die in presidential palace gun battle

A man in military uniform opened fire in the palace of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila today, launching a gun battle that left two members of the presidential guard and the gunman dead.

Three other security officers were injured. Kabila was just returning to the capital Kinshasa when the shooting happened, and was not in the palace at the time, authorities said.

The shoot-out happened in the same area of the marble presidential palace where Joseph Kabila’s father, Laurent, was shot to death at his desk in January 2001.

Authorities did not call the latest shooting an assassination attempt.

“A deranged man in military uniform entered the national security committee premises, took a gun, and attacked the guards for a reason we don’t know because he was killed just after,” spokesman Kikaya Bin Karubi said.

The attacker fired at the chief guard of the post, Bin Karubi said. The guard was hit, and died after firing back.

The others were hit as they pursued the attacker, the spokesman said.

Mysteries still surround the killing of the elder Kabila, a former rebel who seized power in 1997. One of Laurent Kabila’s young bodyguards was said to have shot him, and was himself killed by the guards minutes after.

The motives and instigators of the killing remain unclear. Congo blamed its foreign enemies in a four-year, six nation war on Congo soil.

Joseph Kabila assumed the presidency after his father’s killing. Unlike his father, he does not live in the palace.