Laurent Kabila

The body of slain Congolese President Laurent Kabila was returned Saturday to the town that was once his power base, where family and comrades mourned ahead of a state funeral in the capital, Kinshasa. Kabila's son, Joseph, quickly installed by the government as the new president, did not attend the ceremony in Lubumbashi. He remained in Kinshasa, where the body will be flown today to lie in state before a funeral Tuesday.

A Congolese rebel commander said Tuesday that his 60,000 troops were closing in on the capital, Kinshasa, in a nationwide revolt to topple besieged President Laurent Kabila. "Our strategy is that our friends are everywhere. It's a war that concerns everyone," commander Jean-Pierre Ondekane said in the eastern city of Goma. "We don't want an atrocious war. We want to end this soon."

Citing a lack of cooperation from Congo's government, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has decided to withdraw a U.N. team sent to the African country to investigate massacres, a senior U.N. official said Wednesday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the announcement will probably be made today or Friday, even though Annan was under pressure from the United States to keep the team in Congo.

Laurent Kabila flew into this diamond-mining heartland Monday to survey the latest conquest by his rebel force in its seven-month battle to unseat President Mobutu Sese Seko. Kabila arrived in Mbuji-Mayi accompanied by foreign diamond-mining executives. "Laurent! Laurent!" a group of young men chanted at the airport. About 100 teenage boys yelled the rebel leader's middle name: "Desire! Desire!"

Returning to the capital Sunday from meetings aimed at firming up his shaky regime, President Laurent Kabila stepped up his attacks on Western governments and the press, alleging a foreign plot to end his short rule. Kabila's comments came as his army reportedly lost new ground to advancing rebels in western Congo.

Rwanda began pulling 6,000 troops from a border province in Congo on Tuesday, in the latest stage of a withdrawal from the war-ravaged country that it hopes to complete by week's end, a top commander said. U.N. military observers in white jeeps patrolled the streets of this eastern town in South Kivu province to verify the withdrawal, while Rwandan helicopter gunships hovered to provide security. Army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen.

As a bold and fast-moving rebel army pressed toward this capital to challenge President Laurent Kabila's government, the city showed signs of descending into chaos, with a grenade attack in a busy district, a clash between pro-Kabila forces and a bout of car hijackings by military recruits. Kinshasa's knife's-edge anxiety was exacerbated by the second day of a near-total power outage, which has caused growing concern about health conditions in this largely impoverished city of 5 million.

Congolese rebels say they have captured the last major government stronghold blocking their march on the capital, Kinshasa. As fighting raged Wednesday in Mbanza-Ngungu, 90 miles southwest of the capital, Congo's neighboring states got bogged down in a diplomatic dispute over possible armed intervention to aid besieged Congolese President Laurent Kabila.

After a week of stunning setbacks, President Laurent Kabila's army says it is holding its ground against Rwandan-backed rebels in the former Zaire. Official media and spokesmen in Kinshasa, the capital, said Monday that Kabila's loyalist troops had evicted Tutsi-led rebels near the mouth of the Congo River and were advancing on rebel positions in the east of the nation renamed Congo. There was no independent confirmation of the official accounts of fighting on either front.

Almost four years after his successful bush war toppled a much-hated dictator and propelled him to power, Congolese President Laurent Kabila was laid to rest Tuesday as authorities promised a full inquiry into his assassination. Thousands of mourners massed outside People's Palace, where Kabila had been lying in state in recent days, while a succession of foreign delegations bearing floral wreaths arrived to pay last respects.