In Leopoldville, the Belgian ambassador continued, to no avail, to try to get the Congolese government to approve Belgian troop deployments. But with domestic pressure in Belgium mounting, a unilateral military intervention looked more and more likely. By the afternoon of July 9, less than a week after the start of the mutiny and not even a fortnight after independence, Prime Minister Eyskens had made up his mind: if the Congolese government did not give the green light, Belgian troops would intervene regardless.
Before sunrise the next day, they did just that. Early in the morning, ten planes carrying two companies of soldiers took off from the Kamina air base in Katanga and flew to Elisabethville. The copper province’s capital was in jeopardy: an army camp in the city had revolted, and a group of Congolese soldiers had set up a machine gun beside a road and fired into passing cars, killing five white civilians. Welcomed by Tshombe, who saw the mutiny as a Leopoldville plot, the three hundred Belgian troops took Elisabethville’s airport and army camp without firing a shot.
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