DRC election marred by violence

2006-10-29 19:54

Kinshasa - One person was killed and another injured on Sunday during a landmark presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), police and UN officials in the north of the country said.

The violence broke out at Bumba on the vast country's northeastern border, about 500km north of Mbandaka, capital of Equateur province, when the head of a polling station was caught trying to stuff a ballot box, the UN radio Okapi reported.

Police said one person was killed and another wounded when angry supporters of former rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is challenging the incumbent President Joseph Kabila in the election, attacked the polling station and sacked a pro-Kabila radio station, leading to violent clashes with police.

"The situation has returned to calm and voting operations are taking place normally throughout Equateur," Suzanna Gouveira, the information chief in the province for the UN mission in DRC (MONUC), told AFP from Mbandaka.

Undermine democracy

The Equateur provincial governor, Yves Mobando, told AFP he deplored the acts of violence "that undermine the happy culmination of the democratic process".

"These barbaric acts must end, they no longer have any place in our society," Mobando said.

Officials of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) reported other incidents in Equateur, a Bemba stronghold, including raids on two polling stations and the stoning of polling officials, with clashes between Bemba and Kabila supporters.

Reports of clashes between the rival sides came from both CEI officials and MONUC personnel in Basankusu, 200km north of Mbandaka, but details were also sketchy. In another town, Bikoro, an armed gang assaulted a polling station and made off with ballot boxes, commission and UN staff said.

The incidents of violence in Equateur were the only ones reported during the day in the second round of the presidential election, which is the culmination of a three-year transition to bring the country out of war and under democratic rule.

Elections for provincial parliaments were being held at the same time, following the election of a new national assembly in July.

Elsewhere in the country stretching across central Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern Great Lakes region, voting was peaceful, according to monitors.

Polling stations opened slightly late because of torrential rains in Kinshasa and the southwest.

- SAPA