Congo Rebels Report Seizing Key Stronghold

Congolese rebels say they have captured the last major government stronghold blocking their march on the capital, Kinshasa.

As fighting raged Wednesday in Mbanza-Ngungu, 90 miles southwest of the capital, Congo’s neighboring states got bogged down in a diplomatic dispute over possible armed intervention to aid besieged Congolese President Laurent Kabila.

The rebels said they were willing to negotiate with Kabila to bring the conflict to an end but warned the region’s chief pro-intervention hawk, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, that he will get hurt if he tries to interfere.

There was no independent word on the rebels’ claims to have made another important advance in their push up the Congo River basin from the Atlantic coast.

Rebel commander Dieudonne Kabengele said during the day Wednesday that there was heavy fighting in Mbanza-Ngungu.

Kabila had deployed some of his most loyal and best-equipped troops there, and the rebels said government forces attempted to drive back the attack with airstrikes.

In late evening, Kabengele declared: “We have captured Mbanza-Ngungu. Our forces are now mopping up the town.”

The rebel force pushing upriver is mainly composed of soldiers who served ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko but had accepted the autocratic Kabila’s victory in last year’s civil war.

When Kabila’s ethnic Tutsi allies in the east mutinied three weeks ago, the ex-Mobutu troops joined in. Their support enabled the revolt to leapfrog across the country and push toward Kinshasa from the west.

The rebels now control all key towns in eastern and western Congo, including the oil town of Muanda on the Atlantic, the port of Matadi, the country’s only oil pipeline and its main hydroelectric dam.

Kabila retreated two days ago to his redoubt in the southern province of Shaba, formerly Katanga, source of most of this Central African country’s vast mineral wealth.