- KINSHASA, Congo: Assailants armed with machetes attacked Congo’s presidential residence, and at least nine people were killed.
- The president, who was home at the time, was not harmed in the attack, a government spokesman said Sunday.
Communications Minister Lambert Mende did not have an official death toll, saying only that some of the assailants had been killed or wounded, while others were arrested. However, a witness near the presidential residence reported seeing the bodies of seven attackers and two guards.
While eastern Congo is highly volatile with a myriad of rebel groups and militias who terrorize civilians, such violence in the capital of Kinshasa is more rare.
President Joseph Kabila was elected in 2006 in the country’s first democratic election and is expected to run again in the upcoming November vote. He first inherited his job from his father, Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001.
The mineral-rich Central African nation was ravaged by years of dictatorship and civil war, keeping its people from profiting from vast reserves of diamonds, gold and other resources.
