Strewn with rubble from mortar and artillery fire, the eastern DR Congo city of Goma awoke on Thursday to a new abnormal — hiding from bandits and counting the dead.
Fighting has all but ceased between Congolese soldiers and the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group, which captured most of Goma on Sunday — a dramatic escalation in a mineral-rich region of the Democratic Republic of Congo that has seen decades of conflict involving multiple armed groups.
Under the watchful gaze of M23 patrols, traffic returned on Thursday to the centre of the city, capital of North Kivu province.
Pedestrians walked round bodies left from days of fierce combat that drove the Congolese army out of the city.
Goma’s alleys, already strewn with rubble from the mortar and artillery fire, were now also littered with debris left behind by vandals taking advantage of the chaos.
“There’s nothing left to eat. Everything has been pillaged,” fretted Bosco. “We need urgent help.”
Like other locals who spoke to AFP, he was reluctant to give his last name.
Despite hunkering down at home to shelter from the four days of clashes in which the Kigali-backed M23 Movement and its Rwandan allies seized Goma, Chantal took a bullet to her leg.
“It’s still there,” she said, pointing to her thigh as she waited in line at west Goma’s Ndosho hospital.
It was a long wait for a place in the treatment room, where patients had to lie packed like sardines on makeshift mattresses along the ground.
Michel came to Ndosho to accompany his nephew, also bullet-stricken.
The hospital has a capacity of 146. The wounded waiting list on Thursday was more than 370.
“Seeing all these people here in this state brings tears to my eyes,” Michel said.
Since the M23 and the Rwandan army entered Goma on Sunday, the fighting has killed more than 100, according to an AFP tally gleaned from records kept by the city’s beleaguered hospitals.
With bodies shrouded in white still awaiting collection by the roadside, where drying blood stained the pavements, that toll was all but certain to rise.
The clashes left the city without power or internet access, while supplies of critical medicines have run dangerously low.
Running water was still in short supply on Thursday and tankers were brought in to deliver water pumped from Lake Kivu.
Some jumped into the lake to collect water for themselves.
With the M23’s presence looming large, witnesses were unwilling to give their names.
“We don’t want to live under the thumb of these people,” one confided.
As the Congolese army had by and large fled or surrendered, the sound of gunfire had died down.
But thousands of irregular fighters, either soldiers who had abandoned their uniforms or civilians who had picked up a gun, were dispersed across Goma’s north.
There they continued to engage the M23 in sporadic bouts of urban guerilla warfare or went on to loot the homes of unlucky civilians.
Many residents barricaded themselves inside their homes, fearful for their property.
Outside the city stadium, a curious crowd watched on as three trucks chock-full of captured Congolese troops drove off into the distance, destination unknown.
Other Congolese soldiers, who had escaped the M23’s attention, lay among the wounded, some still wide-eyed with shell shock.
One, his muscled arms marked with tattoos and ritual scars, blamed the officers for having abandoned his unit near the army’s regional headquarters in central Goma.
Four bullets had made their mark on him. All his brothers-in-arms had been captured by the pro-Rwandan forces.
“We were betrayed. They left via the lake, without telling us anything,” he raged.
In their hastily beaten retreat many of his fellow Congolese soldiers had abandoned their equipment.
Dozens of army-green crates spewed out of a burnt-out Congolese truck, gutted of half their contents.
Ammunition magazines, Congolese uniforms and combat vests lay by the roadside — but the soldiers’ rifles were nowhere to be found.
“There were weapons here but the neighbourhood’s petty bandits made off with them,” a local who wished to remain nameless told AFP.
“They’re going to use them to commit burglaries.”
AFP
AFP
AFP
AFP
