Emergencies

Waking up to a dawn chorus of gunfire in Kinshasa

by FredR | March 23, 2007 at 04:16 am | 1018 views | 9 comments | 15 recommendations

As the first cock crowed this morning, heavy machine guns opened fire in our neighbourhood, and Kinshasa (capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo) shook to the deep boom of shelling. Compared with those noises, the rifle fire from the buildings nearest us sounded like popguns. We slept on the floor, just to be on the safe side (away from the window). With carpet and camping mats, we were a lot more comfortable than all those people stuck in office buildings around Gombe.

The fighting was sparked by soldiers firing into the air late on Thursday morning, marking the end of a tense stand-off between government forces and militia loyal to Senator Jean-Pierre Bemba, who had defied an order to disarm. (Bemba came second in the recent Presidential elections, unsuccessfully contesting the results at the Supreme Court in November.)

As civilians fled the area on foot, Bemba's militia quickly spread out, taking control of a large area of Gombe, the city's financial and administrative centre. Sporadic fighting continued overnight, intensifying at dawn, despite UN mediation efforts that led to an apparent agreement on a ceasefire. The number of dead and wounded is not yet known.

On Friday morning, the Information Minister said that the government had regained control of the city centre, apart from a few 'pockets of resistance'. The South African embassy confirmed giving 'temporary refuge' to Bemba, for whom an arrest warrant has been issued. MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force, told journalists that so far it had evacuated around 600 civilians at risk, including many of its own personnel. But thousands more remain trapped in their homes and offices until it is safe to move about in the streets again.

Eyewitnesses said a number of shops, businesses and houses had been looted by soldiers of both sides, as well as by opportunist criminals.

Check Extra Extra for regular updates (and links to other blogs), or news sources including Reuters Alertnet, the BBC, and the MONUC website.

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matte

at 04:26 on March 23rd, 2007

For those of us who do not know where Kinshasa is, it is worth including that in your story early on.

Also, when pasting from somewhere else, some cleaning up of lines breaks is normally needed, or paste via notepad.

Actual News Geezer

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 07:07 on March 23rd, 2007

Fred, a warm welcome to NowPublic. I really appreciate your reports from Kinshasa. I've flagged this as good stuff, and made you a favorite! I went back to your site, Extra Extra - and it's a great resource for those looking for truly intimate news blogging from a hugely important part of the world.

Keep it coming!

(One little question: your audio file of the gunfire says "April 22" - I am almost certain you mean March 22, unless there is some form of Super Daylight Savings Time in Central Africa!)

FredR

at 11:26 on March 23rd, 2007

Thank you for the encouragement. You're right about the date error - must have been distracted...

kate

at 13:50 on March 24th, 2007

Keep safe Fred! This sounds like a very volatile situation

mtippett

at 13:53 on March 24th, 2007

Nitpicking about line breaks aside, this is a remarkable account. Please keep us posted and stay safe.

kate

at 13:57 on March 24th, 2007

OFFICIAL NAME:
Democratic Republic of the Congo

For those of you who need more background on Kinshasa.

Geography
Location: Central Africa. Bordering nations--Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia.
Area: 2.345 sq. km. (905,063 sq. mi.; about the size of the U.S. east of the Mississippi).
Cities: Capital--Kinshasa (pop. 6.5 million). Regional capitals--Bandundu, Bukavu, Goma, Kananga, Kindu, Kisangani, Lubumbashi, Matadi, Mbandaka, Mbuji-Mayi.
Terrain: Varies from tropical rainforests to mountainous terraces, plateau, savannas, dense grasslands, and mountains.
Climate:
Equatorial; ranges from tropical rainforest in the Congo River basin,
hot and humid in much of the north and west, cooler and drier in the
south central area and the east.

Of course Fred is distracted, he is under gunfire. Matte - maybe the thing to do to support him in filing this report is to crowdsource it, to help the story by filling in some of the background information that you see as missing.

matte

at 14:17 on March 24th, 2007

thanks Kate, this fill in helps - but also to MT - there should be nothing against expecting excellence, an assumption that people know where a place is, is an easy assumption to make and easily overlooked when writing a story. The technology lets us down on the line break aspect - some stories that have been pasted are virtually unreadable....at least this contributor noticed that and fixed it.

mtippett

at 16:54 on March 24th, 2007

Matte, Nobody is a stronger advocate of excellence than me. To this end I have always appreciated your efforts (you've tagged my stories with good reason many times). My comments weren't intended to lower the standards but rather to recognize the contribution that was made. As someone who has been designated as an ambassador for NowPublic my expectation is that the tone of your comments reflect this appreciation. In this case I felt that they didn't. I don't want NowPublic to turn into digg. We are not cops. We are teachers. - yrs, Michael.

kate

at 17:08 on March 24th, 2007

One of the things I think is interesting about Nowpublic is the idea of crowdsourcing - how anything can be better when it is created by and contributed to by groups of people. So, let's use this. When telling stories and matching photos to them, when contextualizing photos, when creating expanded views around new events.

Have you ever gone to a dinner party and you know the story a person is telling to a group and you see that they forget to provide a critical detail, and what you do in that moment is fill it in. Not in a way that highlights the fault or failing of their omission, but as a collaborative way to improve the effect of the tale. That's the way I see it.

matte

at 18:43 on March 24th, 2007

Mt - so asking to have the location is poor tone? Providing the solution to the line break issue is poor tone? Hmmm I'm missing something here...

FredR

at 08:23 on March 26th, 2007

Thanks everyone for your comments. I have no problem with critical feedback/editing advice. It's true that I cobbled this together very quickly in somewhat distracting circumstances. It would have been quite a challenge to have worked on an article more collaboratively, as the situation on the ground was very much in flux.

In the event, a few Kinshasa-based bloggers made quite a big joint effort to keep posting what they could see, hear and discover from other sources, with lots of cross-referencing. I think we achieved something resembling a patchy live reporting network over an intense period in which information was gold dust for those caught up in the violence.

It's a pleasure to participate in the interesting experiment that is Now Public.