Rwanda-backed rebels who captured eastern Congo’s major city of Goma have targeted relatives of fleeing Congolese soldiers.
Warning: this pod contains description of violence from the beginning. “They died in the hands of the state. And to die in the hands of the state – that’s something we can’t just let pass… Without their rights they cannot rest in peace.”
I fled the fighting in Bweremana between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo [FARDC] and the M23 armed group. I saw how a whole family was [wiped out] when a bomb exploded,” says Viviane Muteule,
About 200 wounded and sick soldiers from the Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC) are apparently on their way out of Goma in the eastern DRC after weeks of negotiations with M23 rebels.
The clamor of hammering and the noise of rattling corrugated metal roofs echoed in Goma’s Bulengo camp for internally displaced people on Tuesday as residents took down the shelters they had lived in for years.
The armed group, backed by several thousand Rwandan soldiers, has taken the capital of South Kivu province. It continues to advance, despite calls for a ceasefire from the African Union and threats of sanctions.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) heard this week “a parallel administration” seemingly set up by the Congo River Alliance (CRA) is running Goma following the M23 (Mouvement du 23 Mars) takeover of the North Kivu capital late last month.
Delcat Idengo, well-known for his critical songs, died after releasing a track condemning the city's rebel occupation.
On Jan. 29, after an all-out urban warfare battle that killed and injured thousands of people, mostly civilians, Goma, a large city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),