AT LEAST 200 people were killed in various incidents in Kinshasa at the weekend as the rebels of the self proclaimed president, Mr Laurent Kabila, took control of the Zairean capital, the local Red Cross said yesterday.
"By 4 p.m. 200 bodies were found: More than 60 were brought to various morgues in the city, 140 buried on the spot," a Red Cross communique said a day after the rebels entered Kinshasa.
Many of the dead were members of the army of the former president, Mr Mobutu Sese Seko. They were alleged to have been shot down by the rebel forces while looting.
Despite reports of killings, the United States and Britain, among Western nations with troops on standby in neighbouring Congo, said they were scaling back their planned evacuation operation.
Earlier Mr Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire Congo (AFDL) was urged by world powers to form a broadbased government as a bridge to early elections.
Mr Kabila sent a delegation to Kinshasa from the southeastern city of Lubumbashi yesterday.
"I am going to contact all my compatriots without exception. There are parties, civil organisations, everyone, the secretary general of the AFDL, Mr Deogratius Bugera, said. Mr Bugera would not say when Mr Kabila would visit Kinshasa.
In their first broadcast over national radio in Kinshasa, the rebels had ordered all government troops to report by yesterday and warned looters they would be severely punished.
Meanwhile, the South African Deputy President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, arrived at the rebel head quarters in Lubumbashi to become the first foreign dignitary to meet Mr Kabila since he proclaimed himself head of the Zaire state, which he declared would henceforth be called Congo.
The African National Congress formally congratulated Mr Kabila and his alliance and said the absence of major bloodshed was a tribute to the mediation of the South African President, Mr Nelson Mandela.
The US, as well as the former colonial power, Belgium, and Germany reacted to Mr Kabila's victory by calling for a broadbased government and elections. The UN SecretaryGeneral, Mr Kofi Annan, speaking in Moscow, echoed that message and urged Mr Kabila to respect the "choice and voice" of the Zairean people.
The Organisation of African Unity urged reconciliation. "The people of CongoZaire have great expectations. So does Africa," the OAU said. Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda said they would work with a new government under Mr Kabila.
Pope John Paul II called for the plight of Rwandan Hutu refugees not to be overlooked.
France, a longtime Mobutu ally, acknowledged Zaire's shift of power and urged the alliance to allow a UN investigation of reports that rebels had massacred refugees.
. Soldiers of the victorious rebel army summarily executed a man yesterday accused of being an officer in Mr Mobutu's presidential guard. The man was gunned down by automatic weapons fire by a group of five soldiers in an alleyway, after he had been brought to a captured barracks where Zaire army troops and police were surrendering and turning in their weapons.
"People in the crowd seemed to recognise him right away and started calling on the troops to hit him, kill him," a Reuters photographer, Ms Corinne Dutka said.
She said the man, dressed in civilian clothes but apparently a commander in Mr Mobutu's feared Presidential Guard, was taken into an interrogation room for a few minutes then brought out.
"He was walked through the crowd. The soldiers hit him with their rifle butts and the crowd were kicking and slapping him. They walked him out of the barracks gate and across the road to the house's there. Then they took him down an alley and walked back from him. He put his arms down and he seemed to be whimpering or praying. Then they shot him, just like that. It was all over in a minute."