The European Union rushed more peacekeepers to Congo's capital Kinshasa on Tuesday as the UN tried to broker an end to gunbattles between President Joseph Kabila's soldiers and fighters loyal to his election rival.
Rocket and small arms fire shook the riverside city for a third day after Sunday's announcement that Democratic Republic of Congo's July 30 polls were inconclusive and Kabila would face a run-off vote against a vice president, Jean-Pierre Bemba.
But the fighting appeared to die down later in the day. After flying in three helicopters and about 60 French, Portuguese and Swedish special forces troops overnight, the European Union's rapid reaction force for Congo brought in around 200 more German and Dutch soldiers from nearby Gabon.
They joined around 1,000 EU troops and more than 17,000 UN peacekeepers who had protected last month's elections, the first free polls to be held in more than four decades in the vast, war-scarred former Belgian colony.
Since the October 29 run-off was announced on Sunday, heavily armed members of Kabila's presidential guard have repeatedly clashed with soldiers loyal to Bemba, a former rebel chief who commands strong support in Kinshasa. Both sides blamed the other for starting the fighting.
The gunbattles, mostly around Bemba's riverside residence, have killed at least five people and wounded many more, officials and hospital sources said. Bodies have been seen lying on the city streets, near-deserted as residents stayed indoors. The head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, William Swing, called for an immediate cease-fire.
"It is imperative that the clashes end immediately and that the two presidential election candidates meet urgently for the good of the democratic process," he said. Swing made the statement before he and foreign ambassadors met Kabila. They had met Bemba on Monday at his house, where they became trapped by the fighting and had to be rescued by Uruguayan and Spanish peacekeepers.
LOOTING REPORTED: Congo's influential Roman Catholic Church and the European Commission also condemned the violence and called for dialogue. UN troops were being deployed in the centre of the normally bustling city to secure it. Diplomats said they had heard reports of outbreaks of looting in some neighbourhoods.
"The situation is very tense," the deputy EU force commander, Admiral Henning Bess, told Reuters by telephone. Bemba was under UN protection and UN military vehicles guarded his house. Swing said an earlier cease-fire agreed on Monday appeared to have been ignored.
"The people deserve more than clashes like these. People are waiting for good elections and these cannot take place with guns but ballots," he told UN radio. South African President Thabo Mbeki was also involved in efforts to pacify the situation, a South African official said. In the July 30 first round vote, Kabila gained 44.81 percent, well ahead of Bemba, who had 20.03 percent.
But Kabila, who assumed the presidency when his father Laurent was assassinated in 2001, failed to obtain the more than 50 percent needed to win outright in the first round.
The elections were meant to draw a line under a decade of conflict in the former Zaire, where a 1998-2003 war sparked a humanitarian crisis that killed more than 4 million people. But they have underlined deep political and ethnic divisions.
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