“We fled without looking back, without even taking a plate with us”: Like Salomé, 60, thousands of people crowd around Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which after two years of flight has become a refuge for cohorts of displaced people. “M23” uprising.
About ten days ago, fighting between government troops and rebels, supported by units of the Rwandan army, intensified in Sake, a strategic town in the Masisi area, about twenty kilometers west of the provincial capital of North Kivu.
Sake is considered the last “barrier” to Goma, a symbol of resistance to the insurgency that occupies large parts of the province, and an important border crossing for supplying the city with more than a million inhabitants. It lies on the border with Rwanda and borders the South to Lake Kivu.
Bombs fell and the fighting was fierce. No official figures were given, but various sources said there were dozens of civilian and military deaths and injuries.
On Thursday, the South African army announced that two of its men, who were part of a South African regional force currently deployed in the region, were killed and three others were injured.
Sake had not yet fallen at this point, but around 135,000 people had fled to Goma, according to the United Nations. Residents of the city, but also villagers who had found refuge there after an initial escape from the advance of the rebels.
“Indiscriminate bombings are increasing pressure on already limited resources to accommodate 800,000 displaced people in the region and 2.5 million in North Kivu province,” states the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees).
“Miserable”
“We escaped from Shasha first [sur la route menant vers le Sud-Kivu] and found refuge in sake,” Janvier Bihira, 25, told AFP. Then “things got hot in Sake too, and we came here,” adds the young man, who is housed in a Pentecostal church overflowing with displaced people.
“We didn’t even know where to sleep, we were like birds. We are suffering enormously,” he says, with no hope of a quick return to his village. The M23 “are very tough, I don't think they can be pushed back that easily,” he said.
Mattresses are placed on the floor in the church. Families who fled without taking anything with them sleep on the floor, on mats or simple loincloths.
“We sleep on top of each other in miserable conditions. “There are more than 85 people in this church,” complains Antoinette Kabumba, while outside men build huts out of branches.
In the city of Goma itself, residents are on the lookout and search for news from the front on social networks and radio.
Sometimes they heard loud explosions, such as on Friday night when at least one “bomb” hit the airport, according to a source in the provincial government.
Prices that are rising due to delivery difficulties are also being discussed.
“Life is becoming more and more untenable!” shouts a woman in her thirties we met at the Virunga market.
Goma is at the center of the violence that has rocked the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo for thirty years. In late 2012 it was briefly occupied by the M23 (“March 23 Movement”), which was founded that year and defeated militarily the following year.
After several years of calm, the M23 took up arms again in November 2021, accusing the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo of failing to fulfill its commitments to reintegrate its fighters. Since then he has conquered large areas in North Kivu and is demanding negotiations.
Kinshasa refuses, calling the rebels “terrorists” and accusing their Rwandan sponsor, who denies this, of wanting to take control of the region’s wealth.