Rebelles confiscated the airport of the largest city of the East Congo, Goma on Tuesday and possibly cut off the main route for help to achieve hundreds of thousands of displaced people after capturing the city on an offensive, the corpses were on the streets.
M23 fighters marched to Goma on Monday, the capital of the province of North Kivu. It was the worst escalation since 2012 for a three decades into the long Fallout from the Rwandian genocide conflict and the fight for the control of the abundant mineral resources from Congo.
The United Nations have heard that the rebels control the airport and are in Goma, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric at a briefing and described the situation as “tense and liquid”.
“In the city there are real risks for the breakdown of law and order in the city, since the weapon injury is present,” he warned, adding that UN peacekeepers and employees were forced to protect them at their bases.
In the Congolese capital Kinshasa, 1,600 kilometers west of Goma, the demonstrators attacked a United Nations and messages, including that of Rwanda, France and the United States, which expressed trouble about foreign disorders. The Kenyan embassy searched the looters.
Goma is an important hub for people who drove out of fighting in the eastern Congo and in the auxiliary groups that they want to support. The fights have sent thousands of people who flock out of the city, including some who had recently offered the M23 offensive since the beginning of the year.
In Rwanda, trucks with their children and bundles of possessions that were wrapped into pieces of fabric.
The government of Congo and the head of the United Nations’ bursting have stated that Rwandic troops were present in Goma and supported their allies of M23. Rwanda said that the threat of Congolese militias defends itself without commenting directly on whether his troops have crossed the border.
Dozens of troops arise
The inhabitants of Goma and UN sources said that dozens of troops had arisen, but some soldiers and militia told the government. The people in several districts reported small weapons fire and some loud explosions on Tuesday morning.
“I heard the crackling from shots from midnight so far … it comes from near the airport,” said an older woman in the northern Majengo district of Goma near the airport to Reuters.
M23 rebels claim that they had captured Goma, the largest city in the eastern Congo, when the United Nations described a “mass panic” among their two million people.
A large part of the fights focused on the airport, and by Tuesday afternoon, several diplomatic and security sources stated that the M23 rebels had taken full control over the responsibility for an important connection to the outside world.
“Through the airport, the UN, the humanitarian groups, the peace troops and even the Congolese army received supplies,” said the Congo researcher Christoph Vogel and added that there was no sustainable access on the street or by boat on the KIVU – Lake.
Reports on rape, looting
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Humanitarian offices, said in Geneva that colleagues had reported “heavy fire and mortar in the city and the presence of many corpses in the streets”.
“We have reports of rape that were made by fighters, looting of property … and humanitarian health facilities,” he said. Other international auxiliary officials described that hospitals were overwhelmed and that wounded in the corridors were treated.
The city’s four main hospitals have treated at least 760 people since Sunday who were wounded by the fights, said medical and humanitarian sources that they could not appreciate precise fatalities on death because many people outside the hospitals died.
François Moreillon, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Congo, told Reuters that a medical camp was looted and he was concerned about a laboratory in which dangerous germs, including Ebola, were held.
“If it is hit by mussels in any way that could influence the integrity of the structure, this could possibly enable the flight of germs, which goes far beyond the limits of the Congo,” he said.
In Kinshasa, angry crowds sang anti-roanda slogans and attacked messages of several countries that were considered cheap for Rwanda, and set up tires and buildings. The police fired tear gas to dispel them.
“What Rwanda does is with the accomplice of France, the USA and Belgium. The Congolese are full. How often do we have to die?” Demonstrator Joseph Ngoy said.
The Rwandian, French, we, Ugandian, Kenyan, Dutch and Belgian messages were targeted. Videos published online and verified by Reuters showed dozens of people who are looting the Kenyan embassy, while others showed that the looting spread to other places, including a supermarket.
Fear of broader conflicts
M23 is the latest in a series of ethnic Tutsi Led, supported uprisings supported by Rwanda, which since the consequences of the genocide in Rwanda 30 years ago when Hutu extremist Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed, and then fell by the Congo became. Tutsi-led forces that still rule Rwanda.
Rwanda says that some of the repressed perpetrators have been protected in the Congo since the genocide and form militias with alliances with the Congolese government and represent a threat to the Congolese Tutsis and Rwanda itself.
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Congo rejects Rwanda’s complaints and says that Rwanda has used its proxy militias to control lucrative minerals such as Coltan and to loot that is used in smartphones.
The unusual and global powers fear that the conflict could hike to a regional war that resembles those from 1996-97 and 1998-2003, in which millions were killed, mainly from hunger and illness.
Coreille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance, to which the M23 also belongs, has suggested that the rebel’s goal is to replace President Felix Tshisekedi and his government in the capital.
UN peacekeepers were involved in the fights. South Africa said that three of his soldiers were killed in the crossfire between government troops and rebels, and a fourth had succumbed to the wound of earlier fights, which increased the number of his deaths to 13 to 13 last week.
