A group of about 40 armed men, including several citizens with foreign nationality, attempted to carry out a coup d’état this Sunday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Army managed to abort the attempt and take control of the situation, according to General Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the Armed Forces. The rebels, led by Christian Malanga, a former military officer of Congolese origin and North American nationality, first attacked the house of Vital Kamerhe, Deputy Prime Minister of Economy, and then entered the Palace of the Nation in the capital, Kinshasa. Virtually all of them have been arrested, while Malanga was killed in the melee.
The events occurred early Sunday morning in the diplomatic neighborhood of La Gombe. At around 4:30 (local time in the DRC, one hour more in mainland Spain), a group of men in military uniform and supposedly arriving on a boat across the river that separates Kinshasa from Brazzaville, capital of the neighboring Republic of the Congo, launched the operation against the home of Kamerhe, who managed to hide with his family. Two police officers in charge of the deputy prime minister’s security and an assailant died in this confrontation.
Shortly after, the coup plotters managed to penetrate the Palace of the Nation, where the offices of the president, Félix Tshisekedi, are located. In videos that circulated on social networks you can see how the assailants lowered the flag of the DRC in the courtyard of the building and raised the flag of Zaire, as the country was called in the times of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Immediately afterwards, members of the Republican Guard attacked the intruders, causing the death of four of them, according to various sources.
Malanga, 41, was born in Kinshasa but lived with his family in the United States, where he joined the Army after obtaining the nationality of that country. After becoming an evangelical preacher, he became known for his critical stance towards the Congolese authorities and his nostalgia for the time of Sese Seko. He even ran in the DRC legislative elections in 2011, although he failed to become a deputy, and founded the United Congolese Party, as well as the New Zaire movement. His son Marcel Malanga, 23 years old and also an American national, is among those detained, as well as two other “white” Americans, Ekenge said.
The US ambassador to Congo, Lucy Tamlyn, has expressed concern about the presence of US citizens among the assailants through the X network. “You can be sure that we will cooperate with the DRC authorities,” she said. One of those detained, according to the Congolese press, is Benjamin Zalman-Polun, an alleged associate of Malanga residing in Maryland who had been arrested in the United States for cannabis trafficking.
A Canadian passport also appeared in the hands of the coup plotters, among whom was also at least one British citizen of Congolese origin, who was arrested. Some of them would have tried to escape across the river towards Brazzaville.
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In the confrontation, a shell fired by the DRC Armed Forces from Kinshasa fell in the M’Pissa neighborhood of Brazzaville, an isolated incident that only caused a few injuries, according to government sources. After the incident, during which intense shooting could be heard, numerous soldiers remained deployed in the La Gombe neighborhood of Kinshasa. However, activity in the Congolese capital continued relatively normally during the day on Sunday. Vital Kamerhe, the first target of the coup plotters, is a candidate to preside over the DRC Parliament, but his election, scheduled for last Saturday, was delayed by President Tshisekedi.
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