Rwanda-backed fighters were in control of almost all of the DR Congo city of Goma Wednesday where residents were re-emerging after days of deadly fighting and Angola urged leaders of both countries to attend peace talks.The M23 armed group and Rwandan troops entered central Goma on Sunday night, progressively seizing the city’s airport and other sites of the key mineral trading hub.Residents cautiously started venturing from their homes on Wednesday as calm returned to the provincial capital of one million people wedged between Lake Kivu and the Rwandan border.”Today we are not afraid,” Goma resident Jean de Dieu told AFP by telephone.”There is hunger in Goma. We have to go get water from the lake and we have no medicine,” another resident Kahindo Sifa said.Despite international pressure to end the crisis, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi declined to attend talks with his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on Wednesday.However, Tshisekedi is scheduled to speak publicly for the first time since the crisis began.Angola, which mediated talks that fell through last month, called for the Congolese and Rwandan leaders to urgently meet in Luanda.The Democratic Republic of Congo has called on the world to stop the advance in its mineral-rich east, which has been wracked by decades of conflict that can be partly traced back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.The latest fighting has heightened an already dire humanitarian crisis in the region, causing food and water shortages and forcing half a million people from their homes since the start of the year, according to the United Nations.Three days of clashes have left more than 100 dead and nearly 1,000 wounded, according to an AFP tally from the city’s overflowing hospitals. However, many more bodies are still to be recovered from the city’s streets, a medic said.The M23 initially claimed it had taken Goma on Sunday, but it has since been unclear how much of the city it controlled. The M23’s leaders summoned journalists for a press conference on Wednesday evening.- ‘Cut off from world’ – While the fighting had ended in Goma, signs of its aftermath remained. Spent gun cartridges littered the streets, while buildings showed major damage from mortar blasts. After many Congolese soldiers fled or were captured, the only forces in downtown Goma on Wednesday were M23 fighters or Rwandan soldiers, some firing guns into the air, AFP reporters said.A long line of hundreds of Congolese soldiers and pro-Kinshasa militiamen, unarmed and wearing white headbands, were marched through the city’s centre by M23 fighters, a security source said.There was also widespread looting in the city, AFP journalists observed.Student Merdi Kambelenge told AFP that the situation had “already stabilised” but said the lack of electricity meant “we’re cut off from the world”.Earlier in the week, Kenya had announced the leaders of the DRC and Rwanda would attend a virtual crisis summit of the East African Community on Wednesday.While Tshisekedi pulled out, Kagame will still attend, his spokesman confirmed to AFP.On the other side of the vast central African country, furious protesters in the capital Kinshasa on Tuesday attacked the embassies of various nations they accused of not stepping in to halt the chaos in the east.With tensions soaring in Kinshasa, the authorities suspended all protests after a new call for people to take to the streets of the capital. The UN, United States, China and the European Union have all called on Rwanda to withdraw its forces from the region.- M23 advance ‘will continue’ -Rwanda’s ambassador-at-large for the Great Lakes region Vincent Karega told AFP the M23 advance “will continue” into neighbouring South Kivu province.It was even possible the fighters could push beyond the country’s east, Karega added. The vast central African country has gold and other minerals such as cobalt, coltan, tantalum and tin used in batteries and electronics worldwide.The DRC has accused Rwanda of waging the offensive to profit from the region’s mineral wealth — a claim backed by UN experts who say Kigali has thousands of troops in its neighbour and “de facto control” over the M23.Rwanda has denied the accusations. Kagame has never admitted military involvement, saying Rwanda’s aim is to tackle an armed group, the FDLR, created by former Hutu leaders who massacred Tutsis during the genocide.The UN’s mission in the DRC has warned the fighting risks reigniting ethnic conflicts dating back to the genocide, saying it had documented “at least one case of ethnically motivated lynching”.The Tutsi-led M23 briefly occupied Goma at the end of 2012 before being defeated by Congolese forces and the UN the following year.The M23 re-emerged in late 2021. After the Angola-mediated talks collapsed in mid-December, it began marching towards Goma.burs-cld-dl/kjm
Wed, 29 Jan 2025 17:02:14 GMT
