Congolese authorities arrested 15 men after gunmen attacked military bases and television stations in the capital Kinshasa on Sunday in what a senior diplomat said appeared to have been a coup attempt.
President Joseph Kabila was safe, a security adviser to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s leader said.
“It was an attack by armed military personnel seeking to undermine the internal security of the Congolese state,” Interior Minister Theophile Mbemba Fundu told a news conference in Kinshasa, where four military bases and two television stations were targeted.
“They were unidentified assailants, but we think with certain internal accomplices.”
Congolese officials said earlier that forces loyal to Kabila had clashed with former soldiers from the Zairean Armed Forces (FAZ) of late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, after finding an arms cache.
Former FAZ fighters apparently want to be integrated into a new national army but feel they have been ignored.
Officials paraded about 15 bare-chested men, some wounded, in front of reporters in the capital. They also showed arms including about 100 AK-47 assault rifles, a variety of grenades and rocket launchers.
The British ambassador in Kinshasa, whose embassy is near a palace housing Kabila’s office, said the attacks appeared to be part of an attempted coup.
“There appears to have been a coup attempt. Rocket-propelled grenades were fired from the direction of the Palais de la Nation (Presidential Palace) in the direction of the president’s house and fire returned,” Ambassador Jim Atkinson told Reuters.
An adviser said Kabila was holding talks with Congo’s four vice presidents after the attacks, without saying where they were meeting.
About 3,000-4,000 ex-soldiers from FAZ -- including some of Mobutu’s former personal guards -- live in Brazzaville, the capital of neighboring Congo Republic across the Congo river from Kinshasa.
Mbemba said it was unclear where the attackers had come from but that the city’s river patrol, now on high alert, had come under fire. State television and a private TV station had also been attacked.
Information Minister Vital Kamerhe said earlier that unknown assailants had attacked two army camps, a military airport and the naval base in the riverside city.
“The situation is under control and I urge people to remain calm,” he said, adding that one soldier had been killed.
Sunday’s violence comes amid political tensions in Congo’s power-sharing government, which took office last year, officially ending a five-year war which killed more than three million people -- mostly through starvation or disease.
