About 130 Israelis and other Jewish evacuees from Zaire arrived here by air Friday, leaving a skeleton staff at the Israeli Embassy in riot-torn Kinshasa.
A mutiny by unpaid troops touched off rioting and looting in the Zaire capital, which escalated last week into a full-fledged revolt against the 26-year rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko.
The Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Avital, who stayed at his post, sent word of the bravery of two members of his staff, who helped the Israeli community leave when it became clear the Central African nation was degenerating into chaos.
The exodus of Israelis followed that by Belgian, French and Portuguese nationals.
At great risk, the Israeli envoys visited homes and helped Israeli families move to assembly points on the banks of the Congo River, secured by French and Belgian troops who had been rushed to Zaire to protect foreigners.
The Israelis, under some danger of gunfire from rioting soldiers, crossed the river to Brazzaville, in neighboring Congo, in a boat owned by a member of the local Jewish community.
The group that arrived here Friday, by plane via Johannesburg, included 100 embassy staffers, military and economic attaches and their families.
Israel has maintained a relatively large establishment in Zaire because of the agricultural and public health projects and military training it undertook at Mobutu’s invitation.
The evacuees also included Israeli businessmen and 30 members of Zaire’s permanent Jewish community, which numbers under 200. Jews lived in Kinshasa when it was still Leopoldville, capital of the former Belgian Congo, which won independence in 1960.
Many of the evacuees said they would return to Zaire when the situation normalized.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
