CONGO: Furious anti-United Nations protests exploded across the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday, plunging the peacekeeping mission deeper into crisis and buffeting the vast country's fragile hopes for peace writes Declan Walsh in Bukavu.
Angry crowds surged through the capital, Kinshasa, burning cars, flinging stones and besieging UN buildings in protest at the peacekeepers' failure to prevent the eastern city of Bukavu falling to rebels.
UN peacekeepers shot dead two people after a mob stormed a UN warehouse; a spokesman said they opened fire in "legitimate self-defence". Elsewhere in the smoke-shrouded city, tens of thousands of demonstrators surrounded the UN headquarters.
"It's like in the movies. They're burning tyres and the police are firing in the air and shooting tear-gas. It's crazy out there," one UN staffer trapped inside the building told Reuters by phone.
UN offices were attacked and looted in the southern cities of Kindu and Lubumbashi, where the peacekeepers sought refuge in a government barracks.
Armoured vehicles were deployed in the diamond trading centre, Kisangani, to prevent crowds storming the UN compound.
"The state is dead!" chanted one mob that ran through Kinshasa after daylight. "We will punish [UN forces] ourselves!" Other protesters demanded the resignation of William Swing, the head of the mission known locally by its French acronym, MONUC.
In contrast, relative calm reigned in Bukavu, the lakeside city at the centre of the storm, where renegade leader Brig Gen Laurent Nkunda pledged to start withdrawing his troops to positions outside the city. Nkunda and a second dissident commander, Col Jules Mutebutsi, said they wrenched Bukavu from government control to prevent a "genocide" of their fellow Banyamulenge tribesmen.
However, yesterday their troops seemed more interested in mass looting and rape. Dissident soldiers emptied warehouses, robbed families at gunpoint and casually herded stolen cattle down the main street. Looters stole 300 tonnes of food aid from World Food Programme transport barges on Lake Kivu.
Hundreds of terrified people crammed into the UN compound, many fleeing sexual attacks. UN spokesman Sebastien Lapierre said that "in several areas of the city many cases of rape and widespread looting by dissident forces of Gen Nkunda and Col Mutebutsi have been reported." An estimated 65 people have died and over 100 have been wounded since hostilities erupted nine days ago. At least half of the dead are civilians, according to the International Red Cross.
Bukavu residents who dared to venture outdoors yesterday displayed naked hostility towards the UN mission, which they blamed for failing to prevent the Nkunda advance. Some stoned UN vehicles.
"We thought MONUC had come here to protect us. But what is the point of being her if they do nothing?" said Antoine, a trader who declined to give his full name.
At the deserted governor's mansion overlooking Lake Kivu, Brig Gen Nkunda promised to withdraw his troops immediately and leave the city under UN control. However, he would only make peace with the Congolese army, which he claimed to still be part of, if the "genocide" of the Banyamulenge in Bukavu was stopped.
Brig Gen Nkunda's fears of a massacre were based on the death of 27 Banyamulenge in Bukavu over the past week, he said. But the US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the claims were "irresponsible and unnecessarily inflammatory".
Brig Gen Nkunda denied his troops were involved in widespread looting, and said that all cases of theft would be investigated. A few moments later, a soldier guarding an ammunition cache at the rear of the governor's residence was seen opening a case full of pink bottles of shampoo.
Tensions around the Banyamulenge community, which has its roots in Rwanda, have been rising in eastern Congo for several years, but UN officials said they feared the Bukavu offensive could cause greater violence than ever before.
In Kinshasa, President Joseph Kabila used belligerent language to condemn both the UN and neighbouring Rwanda, sparking fears of Congo's third major war in less than 10 years.
Rwanda, which started the 1996 and 1998 wars, was behind the attacks on Bukavu, he said. "Once again Rwanda has made it clear it does not want peace," he told the BBC. "If war is imposed on us we will most definitely fight back."
Rwanda's Foreign Minister Mr Charles Muligande denied the accusation. The UN spokesman in Bukavu said: "We've had reports of [Rwanda troops movements in Congo] but for now we cannot confirm them". UN sources said they had also received reports of Rwandan military aircraft being sighted in Congolese airspace.
President Kabila also attacked the UN's failure to act, probably fuelling the explosion in unrest around the country. "We need more [from the UN] than bureaucratic and administrative procedures," he said.
As South African and Uruguayan peacekeepers started patrolling the streets of Bukavu last night, the UN mission to Congo was tumbling into disarray. The mission is widely considered to be under-equipped - with just 10,800 peacekeepers for a vast country- and has also suffered from a lack of international support. No western nation has contributed a significant amount of ground troops to the operation.
Yesterday the Congo peace plan appeared to be in serious jeopardy.
"Quite frankly this \ was coming for a long time. Nobody was willing to take the hard decisions to prevent it. It's no surprise," said one official in Bukavu.