NZULO: The M23 rebel team’s progress toward northeast Congo’s largest city has displaced over 178,000 people in the past two days, the United Nations said, as the soldiers closed in on Goma on the border with Rwanda.
The M23 has been making important improvements, though it was unclear whether the insurgents may try to capture Goma, which they seized in 2012 and controlled for over a year. Congolese government said Tuesday its soldiers seized the city of Minova, on a important supply route for Goma, a local hotspot for protection and humanitarian work.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a grip in mineral-rich eastern Congo in a decades-long issue that has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. More than 7 million people have been displaced.
Congo, the United States and UN researchers accuse Rwanda of backing the M23, composed of racial Tutsis who broke away from the Rwandan troops over a decade ago. Rwanda’s state denies the state.
The UN charitable agency said Tuesday the new size movement was caused by fighting around Minova in South Kivu province.
Thousands of people spilled out of packed earthen vessels in Goma on Wednesday, some with boxes of stuff strapped around their noses.
Displaced people have filled the Nzulo station on the fringes of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and home to around 2 million people.
But some people were now leaving the station as insurgents approached.
David Kasereka fled on a bicycle with a baby, scarcely stopping to talk. ” We don’t know where we are going, if anywhere, the weapons are following us,” he told The Associated Press.
Nadege Bauma, like many in Nzulo, was second displaced due to intense battle in the area of Sake. Inside the station, the family of six gathered what she could of her things and piled them into a bus to retreat again.
” We just learned that the M23 have arrived in Ngwiro ( about 19 miles or 30 kilometers west of Goma ) and we decided to leave the area because bullets and bombs are falling,” she said.
The provincial governor of South Kivu, Jean-Jacques Purusi, confirmed the record of Minova, adding that the insurgents have even taken the mining towns of Lumbishi, Numbi and Shanje along with the city of Bweremana in North Kivu province.
Congo’s government said in a statement Tuesday that the rebels made “breakthroughs” in Minova and Bweremana.
