Congo’s foreign minister said on Friday that a purported threat against U.S. government facilities that has kept the U.S. embassy closed all week is real and serious.
The U.S. embassy in the capital, Kinshasa, has been closed since last weekend due to what it says is “credible and specific information of a possible terrorist threat”.
It has declined to elaborate.
Earlier in the week, Democratic Republic of Congo’s government spokesman said U.S. officials were keeping the government in the dark and questioned whether the threat was an “imaginary alert”.
But in a news conference on Friday, Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu, who met with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Fitzsimmons on Wednesday, said the threat was real.
He declined to provide any further specifics.
U.S. officials have remained tight-lipped in public about the nature of the threat.
However, they have informed foreign diplomats that the embassy closure is due to the arrest last week of a cell of Tanzanian jihadists from a Ugandan Islamist group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), two diplomats told Reuters.