| schema:articleBody
| - Hundreds of separatist rebels staged an incursion into the Democratic Republic of Congo's major mining town of Lubumbashi during the night leaving two policemen and a soldier dead, officials said Saturday. "The toll is 16 attackers neutralised, several wounded and captured," provincial interior minister Philbert Kunda Milundu announced. "Two policemen were decapitated and one soldier shot dead," he told reporters, saying no civilians had been hurt. The situation was now "under control", his statement added. "Bakata Katanga insurgents entered the town from 1am," (2300 GMT Friday) firing live bullets and "managed to reach the town centre", the minister had earlier told AFP. Several witnesses told AFP the rebels had raised the flag of the short-lived republic of copper and cobalt-rich Katanga in a main square of Lubumbashi, in the DRC's southeast. They attacked the regional headquarters of the national broadcaster RTNC, the interior minister said. State television and radio went off the air in Lubumbashi. Kunda said the rebels, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, other firearms, machetes and bows, had split into two groups of 300 and 100. "Accompanied by women and children, they shouted slogans about the autonomy and independence of Katanga," as they made their way through the town, the minister said. However with soldiers and police deploying in large numbers, the gunfire became only sporadic and the town's biggest shop opened for business during the morning at the request of the mayor, an AFP correspondent at the scene said. "The situation is under control. It's time to clean up," Upper Katanga province's information minister and spokesman Harce Kayumba told AFP. "The shooting you can hear now is more of a deterrent than confrontational, at least for now," the minister explained during the morning, saying security forces had been ordered to fire in the air. "Our forces have been told not to shoot at them but to follow them on their way through," Kayumba said. There was an attempted breakout from the town's Kassapa jail on Friday night before the incursion with the help of heavily-armed outsiders, but it was stopped, the authorities said. "Four detainees who made a hole in the prison wall to escape have been shot dead," said prison director Pelar Llunga, adding the facility had been badly damaged. Officials had previously reported no deaths. The insurgents, fighting for the mining-rich region to secede from DR Congo, had raised the Katanga flag in Lubumbashi in 2015 before handing themselves over to UN forces. The rebels were demobilised in Lubumbashi and due to return to civilian life. However they say the authorities abandoned them after a period of training at an army base. lk-bmb/bp/tgb
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)