Rwandan-backed M23 rebels appeared to have consolidated their control over Goma, with the largest city in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) mostly quiet yesterday, apart from sporadic gunfire in some outlying districts, residents said.
Rebel fighters, supported by Rwandan troops, on Monday marched into the lakeside city of nearly 2 million in the worst escalation of a long-running conflict in more than a decade, leaving bodies lying in the streets and hospitals overwhelmed.
On Tuesday, they seized the city’s international airport, which could cut off the main route for aid to reach hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“There are some sporadic shots that are heard here in the neighborhood. They are certainly Wazalendo,” said one resident of the northern Majengo neighborhood, referring to militias that allied with the government in 2022 to resist M23 advances in the hinterlands.
The assault on Goma has led to widespread international condemnation of Rwanda and calls for a ceasefire. The US on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to consider unspecified measures to halt the offensive.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame wrote on X that he had agreed in a telephone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the need for a ceasefire, but gave no indication of bowing to demands for a withdrawal from Goma.
Photo: AP
“Had a productive conversation with Secretary Rubio on the need to ensure a ceasefire in Eastern DRC and address the root causes of the conflict once and for all,” Kagame wrote.
Rubio told Kagame that Washington was “deeply troubled” by the escalation and urged respect for “sovereign territorial integrity,” the US Department of State said in a statement.
M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed insurgencies that have roiled the DR Congo since the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda 30 years ago, when Hutu extremists killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then were toppled by the Tutsi-led forces led by Kagame.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Rwanda says some of the ousted perpetrators have been sheltering in the DR Congo since the genocide, forming militias with alliances with the Congolese government, and pose a threat to Congolese Tutsis and Rwanda itself.
Congo rejects Rwanda’s complaints, and says Rwanda has used its proxy militias to control and loot lucrative minerals such as coltan, which is used in smartphones.
The Congolese and Rwandan army exchanged fire across their shared border on Monday, with Rwanda reporting at least nine deaths.
At a stadium in Goma on Tuesday, hundreds of unarmed government soldiers and militia fighters sat on the soccer pitch while others lined up in what the M23 fighters described as a disarmament process, according to an unverified video seen by Reuters.
Bertrand Bisimwa, who leads the M23’s political wing, wrote on X that the last pockets of resistance in Goma had been put down.
The DR Congo and the head of UN peacekeeping have said that Rwandan troops are present in Goma, backing their M23 allies. Rwanda has said it is defending itself against the threat from Congolese militias, without directly commenting on whether its troops have crossed the border.
In the capital, Kinshasa, 1,600km west of Goma, protesters on Tuesday attacked a UN compound and embassies including those of Rwanda, France and the US on Tuesday, angered at what they said was foreign interference.
Goma’s four main hospitals have treated at least 760 people wounded by the fighting, medical and humanitarian sources said on Tuesday, cautioning that an accurate death toll could not be established since many people were dying outside hospitals.
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