Kinshasa - Armed men on Thursday razed the offices of an opposition party at Mbuji-Mayi in the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo, witnesses said, adding that several people were tortured and detained.
"A local official in Kasai-Oriental province, escorted by troops, swooped on the offices of our party at two o'clock in the morning, ordered the premises be sacked and arrested fighters guarding the building," said a lawyer acting for the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party.
"The whole building was completely burned down and the fighters led off to an unknown destination," the lawyer, Joseph Mukendi, who is an advisor to the elderly UDPS leader and veteran politician Etienne Tshisekedi, told reporters.
The attack, confirmed by residents of the town, came two days after unrest that claimed at least two lives and left nine wounded when UDPS supporters set fire to the offices of rival political parties in the town and then clashed with police.
"An armed group trashed the local UDPS offices and tortured fighters there, six of whom were released while two are missing," a businessman, who wished to remain anonymous, told reporters in Kinshasa by telephone.
Kasai Oriental's provincial governor, Dominique Kantu, accused Tshisekedi supporters in the chief town of the province of "wrecking the offices themselves" because they want "to pursue the violence they started on Tuesday".
The identity of the local official accused by the UDPS of leading the overnight raid was unclear.
The violence in Mbuji-Mayi began a day after President Joseph Kabila gave a speech to the nation while both houses of the transitional parliament adopted a post-war constitution for the vast country devastated by decades of dictatorial rule, then two wars in the 1990s that ended in 2003.
Kabila, without actually saying it, indicated it would be impossible to hold free and democratic elections for the first time since those at independence in 1960 by June 30, an initial deadline agreed to by all political parties.
Tshisekedi, a longstanding foe of successive governments in Kinshasa, had called for strikes and "dead city" work stoppages around the DRC, announcing in the face of most participants in the peace process and of a large UN observer mission that, as far as he was concerned, June 30 was the end of the transition.
His call was largely ignored in Kinshasa and other big towns, but tension has run so high in Mbuji-Mayi this week that local authorities on Tuesday night imposed a curfew from midnight to 6am for an unspecified period. According to hospital sources, who gave a higher casualty toll than officials, four people were killed on Tuesday. - Sapa-AFP