Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing the fighting that the Army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the rebels of the group M23 (March 23 Movement) are waging near the city of Goma.
The insurgency has been underway for three years, but has intensified in January with the advance of troops and control of more and more Congolese territory. Earlier in the year, they captured the key towns of Minova and Masisi in eastern Congo.
For days, the M23 insurgents, supported by Rwanda, have been trying to take control of Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo (one million inhabitants), while government forces struggle to repel the advances.
UN peacekeepers are also present, supporting the Congolese government, and intense fighting has left several soldiers dead. The UN Security Council met this Sunday, a day earlier than planned, to discuss the crisis, after four peacekeepers from Malawi and Uruguay died a day earlier. Nine South Africans, including two from the UN mission in Congo and seven from a separate mission in southern Africa, also died, South African authorities announced.
The M23 has asked the Congolese military in Goma to surrender to avoid a bloodbath and has given a 48-hour ultimatum to the Armed Forces to lay down their weapons.
Congo, the UN and other countries accuse its neighbor Rwanda of fueling the conflict with its own troops and weapons. Rwanda denies this, but the Congolese army claimed on Saturday that Rwandan snipers were responsible for the assassination of the military governor of North Kivu who was visiting the front line on Friday.
As a measure of rejection, Congo withdrew its diplomats from Rwanda and asked the Rwandan authorities to cease diplomatic and consular activities in the Congolese capital within 48 hours, according to a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Rwandan Embassy. dated January 24; A ministry representative said Saturday that the letter represented “the most severe form of diplomatic rupture.”
Guatemalan soldiers of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
AFP
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Sunday called on Rwandan forces to withdraw from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and stop supporting M23 fighters advancing on the key Congolese city of Goma.
“Rwanda is trying to enter by all means, but we remain firm,” a Congolese military source told Reuters, noting that the rebels had destroyed some equipment near the village of Kilimanyoka, about 20 kilometers from Goma. “It’s a war, there are losses everywhere… the population must stay calm, we are fighting,” the source said.
The M23 issued a statement this Sunday in which they demand the departure of all foreign military forces deployed in the Congo and have begun to restrict passage on the border with Rwanda amid the siege imposed on Goma. The M23 “urges all foreign armed forces present in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in particular the Burundi National Defense Force (FDNB), the Southern African Community Mission (SAMIDRC) and the Military Private Companies (MPC) ) of Ajemira, to immediately stop killing our population and leave Congolese soil,” the group published in a statement.
Different sources have denounced the presence of Burundian forces in Congolese uniform fighting against the M23. For its part, the Southern African Development Community has sent a contingent of more than 3,000 South African, Tanzanian and Malawian soldiers to the area.
Humanitarian crisis
Eastern Congo remains fertile ground for rebels and militia strongholds, following two successive regional wars stemming from the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Well-trained and professionally armed, the M23 – the latest in a long line of Tutsi-led rebel movements – claims it exists to protect Congo’s ethnic Tutsi population.
However, the Congolese government claims that the rebels are agents of Kigali’s expansionist ambitions in the region, an accusation that the Rwandan government has long denied.
Humanitarian agencies are concerned about the impact of the conflict on civilians and warn that the fighting will deepen what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee multiple combat zones since the latest M23 offensive around Goma began on January 23, the UN humanitarian coordinator’s office said in a statement. “Several sites on the outskirts of Goma, housing more than 300,000 displaced people, were completely emptied in the space of a few hours,” the statement said.
The escalating violence has forced the World Food Program to temporarily suspend emergency operations, its executive director said in a social media post on Sunday.
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