THE Congolese city of Goma and the seven refugee camps around it are being “suffocated” as rebel militia groups encircle the city, a Congolese bishop has said.
About 850,000 people are now living in the camps, and 135,000 have been forced to flee their homes since the start of this month.
Poppy Anguandia, who leads Tearfund’s work in the DRC, said: “That’s like the whole population of Oxford having to find emergency shelter. And that’s on top of the two-and-a-half million people already displaced in the North Kivu region.
“Even the camps where people are sheltering and the roads to Goma are coming under attack; so people don’t feel safe anywhere.”
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Goma, the Rt Revd Willy Ngumbi Ngengele, said that Goma has been “completely suffocated since the M23 troops advanced into the city of Sake, 30km west of Goma. There is a real risk that famine will break out in Goma, and that people start to die from lack of food. We watch helplessly as a humanitarian disaster unfolds,” he told Vatican news.
Goma lies on the Congolese-Rwandan frontier, and is a strategic hub. Rebels belonging to the Tutsi-led militia group M23 have blocked roads in and out of the area. There are as many as 100 armed groups fighting in the DRC, but the M23 is the most well resourced and organised.
Clashes between the DRC army and the M23 rebels have intensified since the New Year. An East African force that was in the Congo to protect civilians and secure regions abandoned by the rebels left the country at Christmas, at the government’s request, and there has been an increase in fighting ever since. The UN peacekeeping force MONUSCO is also due to leave at the end of this year.
Civilians have been caught up in the clashes, and hospitals are overflowing with casualties.
David Munkley, from World Vision, said: “We saw women arriving in Goma from Sake and Masisi in panic because, in the chaos of fleeing, they had become separated from their children. My heart breaks when I see youngsters arriving in overcrowded camps after walking for days. They told us that they had fled their homes without taking anything, because shells were hitting their homes, killing and injuring civilians.”
The DRC government and UN officials have accused Rwanda of supporting and resourcing the M23 rebels, who claim to defend ethnic Tutsi interests against Hutu militias, whose leaders participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rwanda has denied this. People have taken to the streets of the capital, Kinshasa, and Goma to protest against deteriorating security, and to call on the international community to hold Rwanda to account for its alleged support for the rebels.
The DRC’s population is 95 per cent Christian, but in some areas Christians are facing increasing violence at the hands of Islamist rebel groups. Last year, the bombing of a church killed 15 people and injured many more.