A FEROCIOUS battle for Brazzaville airport has shredded Congo's week old truce, sending hundreds of civilians fleeing.
Panicky troops loyal to President Pascal Lissouba yesterday assaulted France's ambassador, beat up his bodyguard and shot at his escort as he tried to leave Mr Lissouba's palace after a meeting, members of his entourage said.
Diplomats said Mr Lissouba's foe, former president Denis Sassou Nguesso, appeared to have launched an assault on the city's strategically vital airport. "It seems Sassou has taken at least part of the airport and created a new military situation which is making the government troops nervous, one said by telephone. "There is no ceasefire any more.
Shells slammed into the landmark high rise Sofitel hotel beside the Congo river and landed around the nearby French embassy, just 200 metres on Mr Lissouba's side of the frontline which divides the city. Some 30 French nationals, mostly diplomats and gendarmes, took refuge in the embassy compound. The shelling continued into the early evening.
"Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are fleeing north and south to the edges of the city," international Red Cross spokesman Mr Paolo Dell'Oca said in the twin capital of Kinshasa, just over the river in the former Zaire.
A shaky week old ceasefire had dampened but failed to stop clashes between Mr Lissouba and Mr Sassou, whose 12 days of battles erupted on June 5th and have left 1,000 to 3,000 people dead.
Yesterday's airport clash frayed nerves among Mr Lissouba's regular army and his private Zulu militia fighting alongside. Discipline evaporated at their roadblocks and even at the presidential palace itself, where diplomats heard officials screaming at each other.
French ambassador Mr Raymond Cesaire, visiting Mr Lissouha, had to retreat to the presidential palace when soldiers assaulted him as he left. His bodyguard was knocked unconscious with a rifle and beaten. Soldiers fired three shots into an armoured car carrying Mr Cesaire's gendarme escorts, but no one was injured.
Political mediation efforts are aimed at presidential elections, due on July 27th, getting back on track.