Gunmen kill three soldiers at DR Congo airport

Three elite troops were killed at an airport at Lubumbashi, DR Congo's second city, in a night attack blamed on regional separatists, officials said Wednesday.

"Unidentified gunmen attacked Luano airport in Lubumbashi. The toll is one republican guard who was burned to death and two others who died of gunshot wounds," Major Ibrahim Diene of the United Nations MONUSCO peacekeeping force said.

"The attackers managed to flee into the forest as other members of the republican guard fought back. An investigation is under way to determine the cause of what happened," he said.

An AFP journalist saw the bodies of two republican guards lying beside a military tent near the airport, and heard sounds of firing in the area, though flights were not affected.

However security was stepped up, with a heavy troop presence, roadblocks and identitiy checks on the roads leading to the airport.

"We heard heavy shooting around two in the morning (0000 GMT), which went on till five. Then around 10 am there was more firing," a woman witness told AFP.

She said she had seen men in ragged clothes and wearing charms around their necks throwing grenades into the tents of troops guarding the runway at the airport some 12 kilometres (eight miles) outside Lubumbashi.

A similar incident occurred in February last year at the same airport, when a civilian security guard was killed.

A national intelligence agency source said Wednesday the attackers were from the same Katangan separatist group that carried out the earlier assault, hoisting a flag at the UN base and sparking a three-hour gun battle with troops.

Four of the attackers were captured during that incident and later condemned to death by a Lubumbashi military court.

Lubumbashi lies on the southeastern tip of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) from the capital Kinshasa.

Katanga, which is the size of France, holds 30 percent of the world's cobalt and 10 percent of its copper reserves as well as gold, uranium and pewter.

It is no stranger to secessionist movements, having tried to break away under Moise Tshombe in July 1960, soon after Congo obtained its independence from Belgium.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gunmen-kill-three-soldiers-dr-congo-airport-003045020.html

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