Early in 1961, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. Jawaharlal Nehru reacted sharply. Calling it “an international crime of the first magnitude”, he asked Hammarskjöld to take a tough line. When the Security Council passed a second resolution on 21 February 1961, Nehru agreed to send an Indian Army brigade of some 4,700 troops to the Congo. The 99th Indian Infantry Brigade was thus dispatched. Thus United Nations mission was strengthened and expanded in response, in an effort to keep foreign mercenaries out of country. In August of that year, three of the four groups claiming control of the country, Lumumba, Mobutu and Kalonji, reconciled with help from the United Nations. It resulted in the restoration of the country's parliament and prevented the outbreak of a large civil war. Tshombe's breakaway Katanga province was not part of this reconciliation. United Nations forces clashed with Tshombe's foreign mercenaries several times late in the year.