Automatic gunfire erupted in Kinshasa late yesterday as members of the Democratic Republic of Congo army and their allies appeared to be celebrating victory in the capital.
Shots were fired at 5.50 p.m. (local time) in the city centre but the intensity of the gunfire died down after about five minutes.
Earlier, there were outbreaks of joy in several Kinshasa neighbourhoods when troops flashing the "V" sign for victory told people that the rebels in the eastern sectors of the capital had surrendered.
Tanks could be seen in the eastern districts of Kinshasa near Ndjili airport in the late afternoon, heading towards the city centre.
Official radio reported that hundreds of rebels had answered a call to surrender made yesterday morning by the Congolese Armed Forces (CAF) chief, Mr Joseph Kabila, a family member of the President, Mr Laurent Kabila.
The radio also reported that CAF troops and their allies had retaken control of the Inga hydroelectric dam, located south-west of the capital and Kinshasa's source of electricity.
The unconfirmed report sparked further street celebrations in Kinshasa, which suffered several power black-outs after the dam fell into rebel hands.
The rebels, meanwhile, maintained yesterday that they were continuing to fight in the capital, and said they still controlled the key port town of Matadi, on the Congo River south-west of the capital.
Government loyalists were deployed heavily in Masina and across the city with numerous checkpoints. Apart from Masina and Kimbanseke, there were no reports of major incidents elsewhere in Kinshasa.
State radio told listeners that any shooting was just the Congolese army mopping up pockets of rebel resistance. It quoted a statement from Mr Joseph Kabila appealing for young soldiers who switched sides to lay down their arms immediately.
"The Rwandan and Ugandan aggressors carried young Congolese soldiers along with them in their adventure. These soldiers are urged to return to reason," an announcer said.
President Kabila, who accuses its former allies, Rwanda and Uganda, of invading in support of rebels who took up arms against him on August 2nd, was no longer in the capital.
His political chief of staff, Mr Abdoulaye Yerodia, said on Thursday that Mr Kabila was still directing operations. "He is in the country," he said. Mr Yerodia declined to say when Mr Kabila left or where he was. Diplomats said he was most likely in Lubumbashi, Congo's second city and capital of his southern home province of Katanga.
Mobs lynched suspected rebels in Kinshasa on Thursday. "The local population is very much against them," one Masina resident said. Journalists counted about 10 suspected rebel infiltrators either burned or beaten to death.
Angolan forces fighting for Mr Kabila have recaptured the garrison town of Kitona, the rebel rear base on the western front, and other towns in the strategic Congo River corridor linking Kinshasa to the sea.
The rebels, who took up arms in the eastern town of Goma after Mr Kabila ordered all Rwandan forces to leave, hold Bunia, Goma, Bukavu and Uvira, the main towns in the east. They also say they control Congo's third city of Kisangani in the jungle interior.
Meanwhile, in Dar es Salaam, Congolese refugees believed to be soldiers from the former army of the ousted dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, have vanished from refugee camps in the northern Tanzanian town of Kigoma, UN refugee agency officials said yesterday.
The suspected soldiers were among an influx of refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo who fled during the war that brought Mr Kabila to power. - (Reuters)
AFP adds from Goma:
Missionaries and civilians killed in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday were victims of crossfire between rebel soldiers and tribal warriors, witnesses said yesterday.
In the rebels' eastern stronghold of Goma, on the border with Rwanda, an intelligence officer acknowledged that the rebel troops had acted wrongly, and a senior rebel official said the soldiers responsible would be punished accordingly.
But all sources contacted put the death toll in and around the Kasika Roman Catholic mission in the volatile South Kivu province far lower than the Italian missionary news agency, MISNA, which reported on Thursday that 207 people were killed.
MISNA blamed the ethnic Tutsis fighting to oust President Kabila for the killings.
One witness, a local businessman, said the death toll "cannot be above 47." He said Mai-Mai fighters attacked rebel soldiers who were on their way to the eastern town of Kindu, killing five of them, including a commander, and wounding three.
"The surviving soldiers went off to seek reinforcements and organised a sweep to find their attackers," he said.