GOMA: Rwandan-backed M23 rebels appeared to have consolidated their control over Goma, with eastern Congo’s largest city mostly quiet on Wednesday apart from sporadic gunfire in some outlying districts, residents said.
Rebel fighters, supported by Rwandan troops, marched into the lakeside city of nearly 2 million on Monday in the worst escalation of a long-running conflict in more than a decade, leaving bodies lying in the streets and hospitals overwhelmed.
They seized the city’s international airport on Tuesday, which could cut off the main route for aid to reach hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
“There are some sporadic shots that are heard here in the neighborhood. They are certainly Wazalendo,” said one resident of the northern Majengo neighborhood, referring to militias that allied with the government in 2022 to resist M23 advances in the hinterlands.
The assault on Goma has led to widespread international condemnation of Rwanda and calls for a ceasefire. The United States urged the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday to consider unspecified measures to halt the offensive.
In a post on X, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said he had agreed in a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the need for a ceasefire but gave no indication of bowing to demands for a withdrawal from Goma.
“Had a productive conversation with Secretary Rubio on the need to ensure a ceasefire in Eastern DRC and address the root causes of the conflict once and for all,” Kagame wrote.
Rubio told Kagame Washington was “deeply troubled” by the escalation and urged respect for “sovereign territorial integrity,” the US State Department said in a statement.
M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed insurgencies that have roiled Congo since the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda 30 years ago, when Hutu extremists killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then were toppled by the Tutsi-led forces led by Kagame.
Rwanda says some of the ousted perpetrators have been sheltering in Congo since the genocide, forming militias with alliances with the Congolese government, and pose a threat to Congolese Tutsis and Rwanda itself.
Congo rejects Rwanda’s complaints, and says Rwanda has used its proxy militias to control and loot lucrative minerals such as coltan, which is used in smartphones.
The Congolese and Rwandan army exchanged fire across their shared border on Monday, with Rwanda reporting at least nine deaths.
At a stadium in Goma on Tuesday, hundreds of unarmed government soldiers and militia fighters sat on the football pitch while others lined up in what the M23 fighters described as a disarmament process, according to an unverified video seen by Reuters.
Bertrand Bisimwa, who leads the M23’s political wing, said on X that the last pockets of resistance in Goma had been put down.
“Our army is working hard to guarantee total security, complete tranquillity and definitive peace as is the case for all their compatriots living in liberated zones,” he said.
Congo and the head of UN peacekeeping have said Rwandan troops are present in Goma, backing their M23 allies. Rwanda has said it is defending itself against the threat from Congolese militias, without directly commenting on whether its troops have crossed the border.
M23 captured Goma in 2012 during its last major insurgency but withdrew after a few days following intense international pressure and threats to withdraw aid to Rwanda.
Analysts and diplomats say that kind of pressure is unlikely to materialize this time due to a reluctance by world powers to take on Rwanda, which has positioned itself as a stable partner in a tumultuous region.
In the Congolese capital Kinshasa, 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of Goma, protesters attacked a UN compound and embassies including those of Rwanda, France and the United States on Tuesday, angered at what they said was foreign interference.
Goma’s four main hospitals have treated at least 760 people wounded by the fighting, medical and humanitarian sources told Reuters on Tuesday, cautioning that an accurate death toll could not be established since many people were dying outside hospitals.
“We had to drain gasoline from ambulances to power the generator because there are people on respirators who couldn’t survive without electricity,” said the manager of one hospital in Goma.
“The injuries are often very severe. Some people die before they even get there.”