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The
12-foot metallic structure first appeared in Kinshasa's Bandal
neighbourhood over the weekend on Sunday morning. On Wednesday
morning, a crowd of curious onlookers snapped selfies and
debated its possible origins.
Videos posted on social media later in the day showed residents
destroying the structure with sticks and then setting it on
fire.
Similar alien-looking pillars were spotted in a Utah desert in
the United States in November, and then in Romania and Turkey,
sparking conspiracy theories and comparisons to the monoliths in
Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey."
In the movie, an alien monolith is a recurring symbol that
appears to play a role in human evolution.
"We woke up and saw this metallic triangle," said Serge Ifulu, a
local resident. "We were surprised because it is a triangle that
we often see in documentaries about freemasons or illuminati."
Similar mysteries have gone viral on Congolese social media
before.
In August, an unidentified flying object was parachuted into
dense jungle in the north of the country, briefly baffling local
authorities.
Local authorities detained two people for questioning until a
subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet confirmed the
device was an internet balloon.
This time again, extraterrestrial intervention appeared
unlikely: Residents said they saw people digging a hole at the
roundabout on Saturday.
"On Sunday morning, I got a call when I was doing some sport to
tell me they found something strange. I came and I said: 'This
is cultural, it's extraordinary,'" said neighbourhood mayor
Thierry Gaibene.
(Reporting by Benoit Nyemba; Writing by Hereward Holland;
Editing by Aaron Ross, Aurora Ellis and Giles Elgood)
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