it." At Lumumba's request, white civilians from the port city of Matadi were evacuated by the Belgian Navy on 11 July. Belgian ships then bombarded the city; at least 19 civilians were killed. This action prompted renewed attacks on whites across the country, while Belgian forces entered other towns and cities, including Léopoldville, and clashed with Congolese troops. The Belgian government subsequently announced that it would provide for Belgian bureaucrats back in the metropole, triggering an exodus of most of the Congo's 10,000 European civil servants and leaving the administration in disarray. Engulfed by the disorder spreading throughout the country, most of the government ministries were unable to function. Katanga and South Kasai secessions On 11 July 1960, Moïse Tshombe, the leader of CONAKAT, declared the Congo's southern province of Katanga independent as the State of Katanga, with Élisabethville as its capital and himself as president. The mineral-rich Katanga region had traditionally shared closer economic ties with the Copperbelt of neighbouring Northern Rhodesia (then part of the Central African Federation) than with the rest of the Congo, and because of its economic importance it had been administered separately from the rest of the country under the Belgians. CONAKAT furthermore contended that Katangese people were ethnically distinct from other Congolese. The secession was partly motivated by the Katangese separatists' desire to keep more of the wealth generated by the province's mining operations and to avoid sharing it with the rest of the Congo. Another major factor was what CONAKAT held to be the disintegration of law and order in the central and north-eastern Congo. Announcing Katanga's breakaway, Tshombe said "We are seceding from chaos." The major mining company in Katanga, the (UMHK), had begun supporting CONAKAT during the latter days of Belgian rule amid worries that the MNC might seek to nationalise the company's assets after independence. UMHK was largely owned by the , a prominent holding company based in Brussels that had close ties to the Belgian government. Encouraged by the UMHK, the Belgian government provided military support to Katanga and ordered its civil servants in the region to remain in their posts. Tshombe also recruited mercenaries, mainly whites from South Africa and the Rhodesias, to supplement and command Katangese troops. Although supported by the Belgians, Katanga never received formal diplomatic recognition from any country. The Katangese secession highlighted the "fundamental weakness" of the central government in Léopoldville, which had