The rebels of the organization M23 today seized the airport in the largest city in eastern Congo today – cutting off the main humanitarian aid route for hundreds of thousands of displaced people – after seizing Goma.
M23 rebels stormed Goma – Congo’s largest city – on Monday in a bloody attack that resulted in the deaths of 25 people and 375 wounded, Al Jazeera news media reported.
Photos making the rounds online show bodies lying in the streets of Goma after the bloody rebel attack.
It is noted that Tuesday’s attack, which has its roots in the Rwandan genocide and the struggle for control of Congo’s abundant mineral resources, represents the worst escalation of the 30-year conflict plaguing the country.
Protesters attack embassies – Thousands displaced
In Congo’s capital Kinshasa, 1,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) west of Goma, protesters attacked a UN building and embassies including those of Rwanda, France and the United States, expressing what they said was anger at foreign interference. Looters ransacked the Kenyan embassy.
Goma is an important hub for people displaced by fighting elsewhere in eastern Congo and aid groups trying to help them.
These clashes have led thousands of people to flee the city, including some who had recently sought refuge there from the M23 attack earlier this year.
The DRC government and the head of the UN peacekeeping force said Rwandan troops were present in Goma, supporting their M23 allies. Rwanda said it was defending itself against the threat from Congolese militias.
People in several neighborhoods reported small arms fire and some loud explosions Tuesday morning. “I can hear the crackle of gunfire from midnight until now … coming from near the airport,” an elderly woman in the northern Goma district of Magengo, near the airport, told Reuters by telephone.
It was noted that supplies for the United Nations, humanitarian groups, peacekeepers and even the Congolese army were coming in through the airport.
Rape, looting and people being treated in hospital corridors
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN Humanitarian Office (OCHA), told a briefing in Geneva that colleagues reported “heavy small arms and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead people in the streets.”
“We have reports of rapes committed by rebels, looting of property … and strikes on humanitarian health facilities,” he added. Other international humanitarian officials described hospitals overrun with wounded people being treated in the corridors.
Francois Moreillon, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Congo, told Reuters that a medicine warehouse had been looted and that he was concerned about a laboratory where dangerous germs, including Ebola, were kept.
“If it is hit in any way by shrapnel that could affect the integrity of the structure, this could potentially allow microbes to escape, representing a major public health issue far beyond the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” he said.
In Kinshasa, angry crowds chanted anti-Rwanda slogans and attacked embassies of several countries considered favorable to Rwanda, setting tires and buildings on fire. Police used tear gas to disperse them.
