Republic of Congo mutinied and attacked European civilians after the Belgian commander, Lt. Gen. Émile Janssens, tried to enforce discipline. Europeans fled from Léopoldville where the mutiny started.[3]
July 9 - The Belgian national airline Sabena began airlifting Belgian citizens out of the Republic of Congo. Over the next three weeks, 25,711 flew home.[4]
July 11 -
Moise Tshombe declared the Congolese province of Katanga independent, and, taking advantage of the Congo's dismissal of Belgian officers from the Congolese Army, asked for military aid from Belgium. The Congo's Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba asked the United Nations to intervene in the crisis.[5]
July 14 - By an 8–0 vote, the United Nations Security Council authorized the sending of U.N. forces to restore order in the Congo and in Katanga, and to request that Belgium withdraw its troops. The first U.N. forces arrived from Tunisia the next day.[5]
July 17 -
Joseph Kasavubu and Patrice Lumumba, unhappy with the United Nations' progress in pressuring Belgium to withdraw its troops from the former Belgian Congo, added a new dimension to the crisis with an ultimatum: If Belgian troops did not withdraw within 48 hours, the Congolese leaders would invite the Soviet Union to send troops to the African nation.[6]
August
August 8 - The Mining State of South Kasai, with its capital at Bakwanga (now Mbuji-Mayi), seceded from the rest of the Republic of Congo, by declaration of Chief Albert Kalonji. Congolese troops recaptured Bakwanga two weeks later on August 24.[7]
August 28 - The United Nations announced that it had sufficient peacekeeping troops in the Congo to preserve order, and demanded that the last of Belgium's forces there be withdrawn.[7]
September
September 3 - In the bloodiest day of fighting since the Congo became independent of Belgium, more than 300 people were killed and 700 wounded as Congolese troops invaded the "Mining State" that had been declared by
^Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (Verso, 2002), p.6
^David W. Wainhouse, International Peacekeeping at the Crossroads (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p283
^ ab"Chronology July 1960", The World Almanac and book of facts, 1961 (New York World-Telegram, 1960), pp175–178
^Eşref Aksu, The United Nations, Intra-state Peacekeeping and Normative Change (Manchester University Press, 2003), p102
^ ab"Chronology August 1960", The World Almanac and book of facts, 1961 (New York World-Telegram, 1960), pp178–182
^"Congo Fight Bloody", Sunday Express and News (San Antonio), September 4, 1960, p1
^Kevin C. Dunn, Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity (Palgrave 2003), pp64–65; "CONGO: Dag's Problem Child", TIME Magazine, September 19, 1960
^Robert B. Edgerton, The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo (St. Martin's Press, 2002), p194
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