The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) army and M23 fighters clashed outside Goma on Friday as the UK, US and France urged citizens to leave the main city in the country’s volatile east, warning the situation could deteriorate rapidly.
Since peace talks failed, the militia group backed by Rwandan troops has gained swathes of territory in mineral-rich eastern DR Congo over the past few weeks, triggering a humanitarian crisis and ringing the provincial capital, which is home to a million people.
US, British and French nationals were urged to leave Goma while airports and borders were still open, in online statements or in messages sent directly by e-mail or text. With fighting intensifying, the UN mission in DRC, known as MONUSCO, on Friday said that its peacekeepers were fighting against the M23.
Photo: AP
MONUSCO’s Quick Reaction Forces have “been actively engaged in intense combat,” the UN said in a statement, adding that “over the past 48 hours MONUSCO heavy artillery fire carried out fire missions against M23 positions.”
It said the raging conflict in the North Kivu province had displaced more than 400,000 people this year and could spark a regional war.
The UN Security Council is to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss the escalating crisis, a spokesperson said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “alarmed by the resumption of hostilities,” his spokesman said in a statement.
“The number of displacements is now over 400,000 people this year alone, almost double the number reported last week,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh, told a news briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday.
UNHCR is “gravely concerned about the safety and security of civilians and internally displaced people” in the east, Saltmarsh said.
“Heavy bombardments caused families from at least nine displacement sites on the periphery of Goma to flee into the city to seek safety and shelter,” he said, adding that many were living rough.
Military sources said clashes took place all day about 20km west of Goma, where cuts to mobile and Internet networks as well as electricity were frequent.
Witnesses said Congolese military helicopters headed Friday toward M23 positions around Sake — 25km northwest of Goma — with explosions heard in western districts of the town.
DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi was due to hold a defense council meeting yesterday, following a crisis meeting on Thursday.
The military governor of North Kivu, General Peter Cirimwami, died on Friday morning, military and UN sources said.
He had been shot on Thursday near the front line.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver