Dead bodies lay on the streets and explosions and gunfire echoed across the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Tuesday, as fighting continued to rage between the army and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.
Residents reported continuing gun and mortar fire in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and a regional humanitarian hub for displaced people, after M23 fighters entered the city on Sunday.
At least 100 people have been killed and 1,000 wounded in three days of heavy fighting which has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the province. Hospitals were overwhelmed by patients with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, UN and other aid agencies said on Tuesday.
“The humanitarian situation in and around Goma remains extremely worrying,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (Ocha), at a briefing in Geneva.
“We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property … and humanitarian health facilities being hit,” he added.
At the same briefing, Adelheid Marschang, the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency response coordinator for DRC, said there were reports of health workers being shot at and patients including babies being caught in crossfire.
Speaking at an emergency meeting of the UN security council in New York, DRC foreign minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said more than 500,000 people had been displaced by the fighting in January alone.
The Red Cross said one of its hospitals had received, within 24 hours, more than 100 patients with head wounds and chest trauma from mortars and shrapnel.
Patrick Youssef, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) regional director for Africa, said: “While the hospital is overwhelmed, we are still receiving calls from desperate injured people who struggle to access healthcare.”
He added that the organisation had seen a significant increase in the number of severely injured children.
International troops have also died in the fighting. Thirteen South African peacekeepers have been killed in the past week, while three Malawian soldiers and one Uruguayan have been killed in the conflict, their respective militaries said.
M23, a Tutsi-led group that the DRC, the UN, the US and other countries say is supported by Rwanda, claims it seeks to protect the interests of the Congolese Tutsi and other minorities.
The militia’s entry into Goma has reverberated across the country. In the capital, Kinshasa, people protested on the streets against the conflict and attacked embassies of countries they accused of abetting Rwanda’s support for M23.
They targeted the embassies of Belgium, France, Kenya, Rwanda and the US, lighting fires in those of France and Rwanda.
“All of this is because of Rwanda,” a protester said. “What Rwanda is doing is in complicity with France, Belgium, the United States and others. The people of Congo are tired. How many times should we die?”
Protesters also burned tyres and clashed with police, who fired teargas to disperse them.
The US on Tuesday urged its citizens to leave the DRC. “Due to an increase in violence throughout the city of Kinshasa, the US embassy in Kinshasa advises US citizens to shelter-in-place and then safely depart while commercial options are available,” a statement said.
DRC’s communications minister, Patrick Muyaya, asked demonstrators to stop the attacks. “We have every right … to express our anger, but let’s do it peacefully. Let’s not attack the consular infrastructures of countries accredited in Congo,” he said on national television.
M23 is one of more than 100 armed groups fighting to make territorial gains in DRC’s mineral-rich east to fund their operations.
DRC is the world’s biggest producer of tantalum, which is widely used to make electronic components, and cobalt, which is critical in making batteries for mobile phones and electric vehicles.
Last year, M23 captured Rubaya, a key mining town for coltan, a mineral used in the manufacture of mobile phones and laptops. The group makes $800,000 (£650,000) monthly in taxes on production and trade of the mineral, according to a report by UN experts.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
