Police clash with assailants in Congo capital
Clashes have erupted in Congo’s capital, Brazzaville, between police and armed assailants in the first outbreak of violence in the African country weeks after the re-election of President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
The gunfire broke out at 3 a.m. local time on Monday in the capital’s southern neighborhoods of Makelekele and Bacongo, which are opposition’s strongholds, and continued for three hours. The firing resumed again at 8 a.m., witnesses said.
Assailants torched police station and a government building. Several explosions were also heard during the clashes.
Supporters of opposition group shouted “Sassou, leave!” and erected barricades near the main roundabout in Makelekele.
Clashes came as the African country’s Constitutional Court was studying the validity of results from the recent presidential election.
Sassou Nguesso won 60 percent of the votes cast in the March 20 election, which was dismissed as fraudulent by the opposition who called for a campaign of civil disobedience.
The 72-year-old former paratrooper colonel served as president from 1979 to 1992 and returned to power in 1997 following a civil war. He further won two successive terms in 2002 and 2009.
The oil- and timber-rich African country has been on edge since last October, when a controversial constitutional referendum ended a two-term limit on presidential mandates and allowed Nguesso to run for a third term.
Over the past few months, people have held demonstrations and staged general strikes to express their outrage at the contentious move.
Critics have accused the Congolese president of nepotism and corruption.
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