Twelve Dead in Congo Street Clashes

At least 12 people were killed and 27 wounded in the Democratic Republic of Congo as government troops clashed with supporters of a former rebel leader.

Heavy gun and mortar fire shook the capital, Kinshasa, for a second day, the first bout of fighting in the city since an October run-off vote won by the president, Joseph Kabila, against the former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba.

The fighting started when forces loyal to Mr Bemba, now a businessman, defied a government order to disarm under a plan to cut his security detail to just 12 police officers.

Residents reported incidents of looting across the city by soldiers from both sides as well as gangs of street children.

Congo's state prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant for high treason for Mr Bemba, blaming him for killings and rape.

"This is a rebellion ... He has committed high treason," Antoine Ghonda, a roving ambassador attached to Mr Kabila's presidency, told Reuters.

Bodies lay in the street and several columns of smoke rose from fires across the city including one near Mr Bemba's residence in the city's plush Gombe district, the scene of the worst fighting.

In Brussels, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, urged Mr Bemba to disarm but called on Mr Kabila to treat opponents fairly.

"I think in a country after elections the tendency is - slowly sometimes but as rapidly as possible - to have one armed forces," Mr Solana said.

"On the part of Kabila he has to understand that he has to give time, and has to behave properly with leaders of the opposition."

Mr Bemba, who has taken refuge in South Africa's embassy, also appealed for an end to the fighting.

"The city needs calm and the people need calm," Mr Bemba told Radio France International. "I hope the other side has also understood the need to stop the fighting."

The UN, which has 17,000 troops in Congo in its largest peacekeeping operation, said government forces were gaining ground on Mr Bemba's fighters, some of whom fought in his Ugandan-backed rebel movement during the devastating 1998-2003 war.

Nearly 4 million people died in the conflict, mainly through hunger and disease.

"Bemba's fighters are running out of ammunition and their morale is low," said a UN military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Didier Rancher.

"We have a lot of dead bodies, mostly military, but also civilians but no precise numbers."

He told Belgian radio that some of Mr Bemba's men were starting to surrender at UN bases in the city.

The October vote - the first free presidential election since independence - was intended to legitimise Mr Kabila's hold on power, six years after he inherited the presidency following the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila. The election, it was hoped, would end a decade of foreign invasion and civil war. But Mr Bemba's Union for the Nation coalition of about 50 opposition parties disputed the result, saying it had won more than half the votes and accused Mr Kabila of manipulating the result.

Dozens were killed in fighting between Mr Bemba's forces and Mr Kabila's guard before the October election, which reflected a deep divide along regional and ethnic lines that in Kinshasa included an overwhelming rejection of the president.

Foreign observers say there were irregularities but not on a scale that came close to overturning Mr Kabila's victory.