UN troops rescued an ally of President Joseph Kabila from hostile soldiers and police stepped in to stop a clash between rival political demonstrators on Friday, cranking up the tension ahead of Congo's election.
Francois Joseph Mobutu Nzanga, son of late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and an ally of Kabila, was trapped on Thursday in a radio station in the northern town of Gbadolite after a gunbattle in which at least four people died.
Heavy firing between his bodyguards and troops loyal to Jean-Pierre Bemba, Kabila's rival in Sunday's presidential run-off vote, broke out when Mobutu Nzanga tried to stop the radio station broadcasting programmes hostile to him.
The United Nations, which has 17,600 troops in Congo - its largest peacekeeping force - said it had gone into the building in Gbadolite, the Mobutus' home town, to rescue Mobutu Nzanga early on Friday.
"He was extracted and escorted to the airport by UN peacekeepers very early this morning ... He should be on his way to Kinshasa," UN spokesman Jean-Tobie Okala said.
"His life is no longer in danger." Bemba and Kabila face off on Sunday in the first democratic poll in 40 years, which is meant to be the final step in a peace process to end Democratic Republic of Congo's 1998-2003 war, which killed more than 4 million people.
In the capital Kinshasa, which is widely hostile to Kabila, a few hundred Bemba supporters charged towards a demonstration in favour of the president on the airport road.
A confrontation was averted only by a truckload of helmeted riot police speeding in between the two groups. The Bemba crowd carried on moving while armed officers guarded Kabila's supporters.
Fighters for the two rivals fought three days of bloody battles in central Kinshasa in August, killing at least 30 people. They have boosted their forces and armaments since then.
The latest incidents stoked fears that violence will dash hopes of a new beginning for Congo, a mineral-rich country blighted for decades by violence, corruption and kleptocracy.
Kabila won 45 percent of the votes in July's first round, when turnout was about 70 percent, and is expected to win the run-off. Results from Sunday's vote are not expected for three weeks.
On Friday a group of 14 Kinshasa-based diplomats supporting Congo's peace process appealed for calm. "Neither the Congolese people, nor the international community can accept at this historic moment a return to violence and destruction which would ... ruin the whole population's hopes for peace," they said in a statement.
They called on Kabila and Bemba to put the welfare of the country above their personal interests. A European Union force backing up the UN peacekeepers has brought several hundred reinforcements to Kinshasa and many expatriates have sent their families home because of fears of bloodshed.
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