KINSHASA: Six people were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, the UN said, as the authorities cracked down on a banned protest against President Joseph Kabila.

Witnesses said security forces fired live rounds and tear gas in Kinshasa to disperse demonstrators who had gathered after Catholic church leaders called for a mass peaceful demonstration against Kabila’s 17-year rule.

The UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO said six people were killed in Kinshasa and 49 others injured nationwide in anti-Kabila rallies. It added that 94 people were arrested across the country. A spokesman for the national police told state television that “two people were killed” in the capital, while nine policemen were wounded, two of them seriously.

Of the two killed according to the authorities’ toll, one was shot at close range by a police officer, the presidency’s spokesman Yvon Ramazani said. “The policeman is under arrest and must be brought to justice,” he said.

A 16-year-old girl died after shots were fired from an armoured vehicle at the entrance to a church in the Kitambo area of the capital, Jean-Baptise Sondji, a former minister and government opponent, said.

Sunday’s bloody crackdown comes three weeks after a similar march on New Year’s Eve ended in deadly violence, during which organisers said a dozen people were killed.

“An armoured car passed in front of the church. They began firing live bullets, I protected myself,” Sondji, who is also a doctor, said by telephone.

“A girl who was at the left side door of the church was hit by a bullet,” he said, adding that she was already dead when she was taken by taxi to hospital.

Government minister Felix Kabange Numbi said that “hundreds of people recruited by the parish priest of Saint-Christophe tried to enter” his residence.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2018