Posted: Sep. 19, 2016 8:00 am Updated: Sep.
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Security forces and protesters battled on Monday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the unrest led to at least 17 people killed, the United Nations mission to the country said. Tshisekedi has vowed that protest will continue until December 19, the day Kabila was supposed leave office.
The office of the main opposition UPDS was among those set ablaze in Kinshasa.
The interior minister said 17 people were killed – three policemen and 14 civilians.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende called the demonstrations a pre-meditated criminal act, Associated Press reports.
“Kinshasa just experienced an uprising which ended in failure”, Boshab said, accusing demonstrators of “deliberately” ignoring a schedule which had been agreed with the authorities.
By mid-afternoon, most protesters had been dispersed and the streets in the normally bustling city centre were quiet.
Felix Tshisekedi, a leading figure in the largest opposition party, the UDPS, spoke to reporters Tuesday as people picked through the remains of his headquarters in Limete, an opposition stronghold.
Deadly protests erupted on Monday, after the country’s electoral commission chose to postpone the next presidential election that was due to be held in November. The country’s electoral commission has indicated the vote would not be held until next year, saying the voter list would not be formalised before July 2017. Protests erupted after the Constitutional Court ruled in May that Kabila, who took power after his father Laurent Kabila’s assassination, could remain in office in a caretaker capacity beyond his mandate.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for restraint, while the head of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, Smail Chergui, said on his Twitter account he was “gravely concerned” about the situation. The mineral-rich but largely impoverished country suffered back-to-back civil wars until 2003, and previous instability has drawn in armies from neighboring countries. The U.N. says about 200 have been arrested.
The coalition of opposition groups said in a statement that the victims were killed by live bullets fired by the police and the republican guard.
It also called on people to gather on Tuesday “to keep up without hesitation the demands made today”.
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Fire was still raging at the building where a tearful woman in her 40s said that her husband had been there when unidentified assailants attacked the building.
