Unidentified gunmen attacked the house of Democratic Republic of Congo’s president on Sunday 27, setting off a short but fierce firefight that killed at least six people, Congolese officials said.
The security forces have so far arrested 50, out of estimated 60 people who attacked the palace. The motive for the attack was not clear, said Lambert Mende, information minister for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to Mr. Mende, a group of heavily armed attackers clashed with security guards around 2 p.m. at at the first of three heavily fortified roadblocks about a half mile from the presidential residence. President Joseph Kabila was home at the time of the attack, but was never in danger.
The assailants were armed with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. After about 15 minutes of fighting, the presidential guard repelled the attackers.
Other people close to Mr. Kabila said the attack might have been intended to feel out the weaknesses of the president’s personal security forces as part of a wider plot to assassinate him.
Mr. Kabila won a major election in 2006 and faces re-election this year, but his grip on most of the country, which is thickly forested and the size of Western Europe, is considered weak.
For the past 15 years, various parts of the country have been engulfed in civil war or insurrection, and gun battles have broken out on the streets of Kinshasa before. Most of the violence tends to be in the eastern provinces, where myriad armed groups fight one another over Congo’s mineral riches, including gold, copper, tin ore and diamonds.
In early February, gunmen attacked the airport in Lubumbashi, a town in southeastern Congo that had been thought to be relatively stable.
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