EGN NEWS DESK
After every week of combating, rebels backed by Rwanda have wrested virtually full management over Goma, a metropolis of two million within the japanese Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hospitals are overflowing with the wounded, and the town morgue with the dead. Goma’s residents are starting to emerge from their hiding locations, desperately trying to find water and meals. And the Congolese army that was supposed to guard them has been vanquished.
On Thursday, in a yard outdoors Goma’s largest stadium, rebels with the Rwanda-backed M23 militia loaded greater than 1,000 troopers they’d captured into truck beds, the place the lads stood packed collectively. Most wore the uniforms they have been captured in. Many of them have been livid.
But the curses they spat weren’t directed at their captors; quite, at Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president, whom they accused of promoting them out, and on the army commanders who had deserted them. Their commanders, along with authorities officers, had left behind their automobiles, seen in movies and pictures, and boarded boats within the early hours of Monday morning as M23 arrived within the metropolis, escaping throughout a moonlit lake whereas leaving their males to battle alone.
Many of the troopers within the vans had fought on, alongside armed teams recognized regionally because the Wazalendo. But no reinforcements had been despatched.
“Tshisekedi pays for this,” one soldier shouted.
“We’ll seize him with our personal arms,” one other mentioned.
“God pays him again,” yelled one other.
A commander of the 231st infantry battalion of the Congolese Army — recognized by its French acronym, F.A.R.D.C. — climbed down from the cabin of one of many vans, the place his seniority had earned him a snug spot. The captured commander, Lt. Col. John Asegi, defined that they’d no selection however to give up. M23 was taking them someplace to present them some coaching, he mentioned, including that they might now do no matter their new masters commanded.
“If we’re despatched to battle the F.A.R.D.C.,” he mentioned, “we’ll battle the F.A.R.D.C.”
As the M23 rebels strode across the yard making ready for the vans’ departure, they seemed extra like a military with their rocket-propelled grenades, fatigues and helmets, whereas the Congolese troopers seemed like a drained, ragtag insurgent group.
The rebels, who already management huge tracts of mineral-rich Congo, have mentioned they plan to march to the capital, Kinshasa, practically a thousand miles to the west, and take over the entire nation.
The rebels had already handed over to Rwanda tons of of captured Romanian mercenaries who had been combating alongside Congolese forces.
Hundreds of civilians stood across the vans filled with troopers, watching this reversal of roles, and getting a great have a look at the lads who have been now in cost. A dozen ladies and kids have been crying inconsolably, having simply noticed their husbands and fathers among the many males within the vans.
“I don’t know the place they’re taking him to,” wept Marie Sifa, who had a child lady on her again and three different youngsters in tow. She was from Fizi, 270 miles south of Goma, she mentioned, and she or he misplaced every thing within the assault on Minova final week. They sought shelter in a faculty, however they may not keep.
“We have been chased out of the varsity,” Ms. Sifa mentioned, crying as if she have been in mourning. “How will I survive? How will I get these youngsters again to Fizi?”
Later on Thursday, a insurgent chief, Corneille Nangaa, gave Goma’s residents a style of their new actuality below the highly effective militia — which some specialists say counts 6,000 troops in japanese Congo, backed by as much as 4,000 Rwandan troops.
“Go again to regular actions,” Mr. Nangaa instructed Goma’s residents at a two-hour information convention at an area lodge. He was flanked by males in helmets and battle gear.
But the scenario in Goma, a metropolis constructed round black lava streams from a close-by dwell volcano, is way from regular.
Dead our bodies lie within the streets. Stores, supermarkets, and humanitarian companies’ warehouses have been looted. Cholera is breaking out. People with bullet wounds — those that survived — are lastly managing to get to clinics for remedy, solely to discover a lack of medication and of surgical employees.
And many households who have been break up up as they fled have but to search out one another.
Elysée Mopanda misplaced observe of her two youngsters within the chaos. The rebels have been holding her husband, a soldier, prisoner. The occasions of the previous week had left her household in ruins.
“I don’t know the place to go,” she mentioned.
Wounded, harrowed, hungry, thirsty or misplaced, lots of Goma’s residents are in an especially precarious scenario.
Most weak is Goma’s displaced inhabitants, which numbers within the tons of of hundreds.
For greater than a 12 months, individuals have fled the insurgent advance by way of japanese Congo’s countryside and small cities, in search of refuge in and round Goma, in sprawling, unsanitary camps which might be notably harmful for girls and ladies.
As M23 closed in on these camps final week, hundreds of people that had been barely surviving there fled the clashes, carrying the little they’d on their heads towards Goma, which might itself quickly be overtaken.
Three households who fled one of many camps simply outdoors Goma hid in an academic heart, surviving on some beans and rice they got.
Without that kindness, “I don’t know the way we’d have survived,” mentioned Furaha Kabasele, a 34-year-old mom whose youngest youngster is just 5 months previous.
They did survive this perilous week. But they don’t know what they’ll do now.
For many, probably the most urgent want is water. The metropolis’s water provide, in addition to its energy and web, was lower through the battle for Goma, and those that had managed to avoid wasting watched it dwindle over the week. Those who had no water tried to beg it from those that did, or paid a hawker as a lot as $5.20 for a jerrycan that normally prices 20 cents.
As the combating subsided, tons of of individuals have ventured to the sting of Lake Kivu to gather water, including a bit of chlorine to attempt to maintain waterborne illnesses at bay.
One of these fetching water on Thursday morning was Tailor Mukendi, 13, who carried two stained yellow jerrycans to the lakeshore, took off his flip-flops, and plunged into the shimmering lake. As the combating blazed, his household had run out of water to drink.
“We couldn’t depart the home due to the gunshots and the bombs falling,” he mentioned.
He stuffed the cans, and struggled to lug them out of the lake.
