By David Lewis

KINSHASA, June 30 (Reuters). Security forces opened fire on on anti-government protesters in Congo on Friday, leaving as many as 12 people dead on the first full day of campaigning ahead of national elections at the end of next month.

June 30 was the original deadline for the polls under a 2003 peace deal to end Democratic Republic of Congo's five-year war and hardline opposition supporters say President Joseph Kabila's government will no longer be legitimate from Saturday.

Many had feared violence as opposition groups threatened to protest and undermine the start of campaigning.

Police in the western port town of Matadi shot at members of the Bundu dia Kongo, an ethnic-based political and religious movement calling for the overthrow of the government, United Nations sources said.

"We are being told that they attacked and killed one military police officer. The military police retaliated and killed 11 people," one of the U.N. sources said. It was not clear whether bystanders had been caught in the shooting.

Security forces meanwhile fired teargas to disperse pockets of demonstrators in the sprawling capital Kinshasa, whose usually traffic-clogged streets were empty apart from groups of children playing football as U.N. armoured vehicles chugged by.

There was a heavy police presence on main junctions. A Congolese helicopter gunship buzzed overhead.

"Today is the end of the transition. Today everything comes to an end," said Pierre Luabeya, an unemployed supporter of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) opposition party.

Presidential and parliamentary elections on July 30 are meant to be the first free polls in over 40 years and are aimed at drawing a line under a 1998-2003 war, which sucked in neighbouring countries and killed millions of people.

Political parties were due to hold talks on Friday about the security of candidates, access to the media and the acceptance of results, but the popular UDPS is boycotting the vote.

SABOTAGE

The UDPS's young supporters, many of whom have taken to wearing blood-red headbands, had promised violent protests in the former Belgian colony on Friday, the day on which it also celebrates independence.

Campaigning for the polls officially began late on Thursday but most candidates started long ago and the opposition has called on supporters to tear down posters and attack any campaigning for a ballot they say is fraudulent.

One UDPS supporter narrowly escaped being lynched by around a dozen members of another opposition party who caught him destroying their campaign billboard, stripping him to his underwear and kicking him in the head. Police intervened and dragged the man off, his swollen face speckled with blood.

When the original election deadlines were missed in 2005, scores of civilians were killed and injured as security forces broke up protest demonstrations, mostly in the dilapidated capital and opposition stronghold of the Kasai provinces.

The polls were then scheduled for June 18 but were pushed back again amid logistical hitches, political squabbling and festering violence by rebels and renegade militia groups in the mineral-rich east of the vast nation.

Reuters AlertNet

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