The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo continued to claim that President Laurent Kabila was alive, if not well, last night even though one of his closest allies said his corpse was lying in a foreign morgue.
But while almost everyone but Congo's government has come to believe Kabila is dead, there was uncertainty over the fate of his son, Joseph. Some reports said he had been killed with his father but others said he had succeeded him.
In Kinshasa the information minister, Dominique Sakombi, told state radio: "The government of public salvation met in a special session ... and decided to entrust the running of the government and military command to Major General Joseph Kabila."
The authorities were still insisting that Laurent Kabila survived being shot several times by one of his army officers on Tuesday. Mr Sakombi claimed he was being treated in Zimbabwe.
But Moven Mahachi, the defence minister of Zimbabwe and Kabila's close ally in Congo's war, yesterday said that Kabila died on the flight to Harare as his poorly equipped doctors fought to save him. Britain has joined other countries in saying it believes Kabila was killed.
Some western and African diplomats said they believed Joseph Kabila was assassinated but a British diplomatic source yesterday said he had been seen in Kinshasa.
An account circulating among Francophone diplomats in Kinshasa has it that Kabila's brutish ways finally backfired when he ordered the arrest of his former deputy defence minister, Colonel Dieudonne Kayembe.
Kabila has had a number of army officers shot for cowardice for failing to obey orders they thought misguided or irresponsible during the war against Rwandan and Ugandan-backed rebels. Some had simply been unwilling to throw away their men's lives.
Kabila's army commanders have little respect for him. The publicly cultivated image of him as the great liberator of Congo from the clutches of the late Mobutu Sese Seko does not wash in a country where almost everyone believes he was merely a front man for the Rwandan army when it invaded what was then Zaire in pursuit of Hutu extremists who led the 1994 genocide.
So when Kabila turned to his son, who is the head of the army, and ordered Joseph to arrest Col Kayembe, the soldier would have had good reason to fear for his life. According to one account, the colonel pulled his gun on the two Kabilas. The president took at least three bullets. His son was hit several times. Other senior officers and bodyguards drew their weapons and the shooting continued in and around the palace even after Laurent Kabila was bundled on to a helicopter.
Both Kabilas were taken by helicopter to hospital in Kinshasa. But with outdated equipment there was not much the doctors could do. So Laurent Kabila followed the path of so many privileged Congolese in need of medical treatment and was flown out of the country.
If Zimbabwe's defence minister is right, Kabila was dead before the 747 touched down in Harare. Mr Mahachi says the body is now lying in a Harare morgue.
Much of his close family was with him on the 747 in a flight reminiscent of the escape of Kabila's predecessor, the dying Mobutu, four years ago. Only Joseph Kabila was left behind.
Belgium sent 10 commandos to Gabon in central Africa yesterday in preparation for a possible evacuation of its nationals from Congo, a former colony.