Congo calm after failed coup

Congo President Joseph Kabila appealed for calm today after armed groups attacked military installations across the capital in an apparent attempt to force him from power.

It was calm in the capital Kinshasa today after hours of battles with guns and mortars on Sunday between loyalist troops and the attackers.

Diplomats called it a coup attempt against Kabila’s year old power-sharing government, blaming fighters loyal to late Congo dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

It was the most serious attack on Kabila’s government since the end of Congo’s five year civil war, which killed up to three million people.

Kabila appeared on state television to say order had been restored. Looking relaxed, he was flanked by his four vice presidents in the power-sharing government, which is trying to regain control over lawless areas in the east and north of a country the size of Western Europe.

“They were terrorists and uncivil individuals who wanted to take over military installations,” Kabila said. “I’m glad they were routed.”

He did not elaborate, or identify the attackers’ affiliations.

While the government has refused to characterise the deadly clashes as an attempted overthrow of the government, fighters loyal to Mobutu, Congo’s Cold War dictator, were among those who launched a “coup attempt,” said British Ambassador Jim Atkinson.

Joseph Kabila has been in power since January 2001, when bodyguards assassinated his father.

Beginning in 1998, rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda took up arms against the Kinshasa-based government, but failed to take the capital.

Despite Congo’s great potential mineral riches, decades of brutal Belgian colonial administration, corrupt post-1960 independence rule and warfare has left the country’s 57 million people among the world’s poorest.