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Other U.N. troops were deployed throughout the city. Indians took the state radio building after a charge with fixed bayonets. Swedish troops attacked the home of Tshombe's Interior Minister Godefroid Munongo (who had fled). Shortly after dawn, the U.N. forces gained their objectives, and O'Brien called a press conference to announce that "the Katanga secession is over. Katanga is now a Congolese province." The cease-fire announcement was vastly premature.
Siege. O'Brien, 43, an intense Irishman with literary leanings (he is noted for a study of Irish Insurrectionist Charles Stewart Parnell) had badly misjudged Moise Tshombe, the strength of his gendarmerie, and above all their determination to fight for Katanga's independence. After the announcement, the central government in Léopoldville named Egide Bocheley as Katanga's "High Commissioner" to replace Tshombe. Bocheley, a follower of far-left Vice Premier Antoine Gizenga, flew off for Elisabethville. When his plane landed, it was not safe for him to leave the airport, and he spent the night sitting up in a chair. Elisabethville was under siege.
In cold fact, the cease-fire—which O'Brien said had been agreed to by Tshombe himself—never existed. Instead, the President was rallying his troops for what soon became a full-scale attack. The main U.N. Katanga garrison, 500 Irish and Swedish soldiers stationed at Kamina air base 260 miles northwest of Elisabethville, was under siege by a strong force of heavily armed Baluba tribesmen, troops led by white officers and supported by a French-made jet fighter. Reported the control tower at week's end: "It will be difficult to hold out much longer."
Even more precarious was the position of 150 Irish troops who had been sent to the mining town of Jadotville to protect its European residents. Under constant attack by hordes of savage warriors, the garrison was cut off from a relief column, but managed to flash a brave radio message to Léopoldville: "We will hold out until our last bullet is spent. Could do with some whisky."
Dirge. Heavy street fighting turned Elisabethville into a shell-pocked inferno, and there was serious doubt that the U.N. could avoid being overwhelmed. Tshombe, after 'a day of hiding, turned up in his heavily guarded residence to direct the battle. Said he: "I am prepared to die fighting in my own home." The tree-lined avenues were littered with the shells of Jeeps and the bodies of men; water and power were cut off, food was running low (and food markets closed), and there was growing danger of disease. Few people ventured out of doors, and many slept in corridors and bathrooms for fear of being injured by stray bullets or flying glass. Said an English businessman who escaped to the Central African Federation: "Elisabethville is a city of terror and hate—hate by the entire population, black and white, for the United Nations troops."