DR Congo attack was launched by 'about 100 fighters'

KINSHASA — Around 100 fighters were behind simultaneous attacks Sunday on the home of the Democratic Republic of Congo president and an army base that left about a dozen people dead, officials said.
One of those arrested after the assault carried a DR Congo military identity card and was a former opposition member, a government spokesman said Monday, as a UN official said some of the group may have arrived from neighbouring Republic of Congo.
The men who launched the brazen lunchtime attack, which officials have said was an attempted coup, were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket launchers, machetes and bows and arrows, the government spokesman said.
About 100 attackers split into two groups to storm President Joseph Kabila's home in the capital Kinshasa and the army's logistical base at Kokolo further south, the UN source said separately, citing security forces.
Kabila's presidential guard killed 10 of the attackers and around 30 were arrested, 16 of them on Sunday night, the UN source said on condition of anonymity.
Five Congolese soldiers were also killed, he said.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende told AFP seven attackers were killed at Kabila's residence but could not confirm deaths at the army camp. A military source said he had seen six bodies at the site.
Mende said that a soldier of Kabila's Republican Guard was badly wounded and his life was in danger.
Mende had said Sunday that Kabila had been at his home on the banks of the Congo River at the time of the attack but said Monday that the 49-year-old president had actually left a little earlier.
Authorities were still trying to establish the identities of the attackers but Mende said one of those arrested carried a military identity card and was a former member of the main opposition party, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC).
The party is led by former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes allegedly committed by his troops in the neighbouring Central African Republic in 2002.
The MLC did not want to comment to AFP.
The UN source said the attackers may have come from Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo just across the river.
They may have crossed the river just before Sunday's attack or infiltrated the capital earlier, he said.
"There are going to be round-ups of opponents to lay all this on the opposition," the UN source said.
Kabila is the first democratically-elected president of the vast mineral-rich country, beating Bemba at the ballot box in 2006.
He was first appointed to the presidency when his father, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated by his bodyguards on January 18, 2001 in another presidential residence as war raged across the country.
His mandate expires this year and presidential elections have been set for November 27.