Dead bodies lay in the streets, gunfire rang out and hospitals were overwhelmed in east Congo’s largest city on Tuesday, as M23 rebels backed by Rwanda faced pockets of resistance from army and pro-government militias.
A day after the rebels marched into the lakeside city, protesters in the capital attacked a UN compound and embassies including those of Rwanda, France and the United States, expressing anger at what they said was foreign interference.
M23 fighters entered Goma on Monday in the worst escalation since 2012 of a three-decade conflict rooted in the long fallout from the Rwandan genocide and control of Congo’s abundant mineral resources.
The Congolese government and the head of UN peacekeeping have said Rwandan troops were present in Goma, backing up their M23 allies. Rwanda has said it was adopting a defensive posture because of the threat posed to it by Congolese militias.
Dozens of Democratic Republic of Congo troops had surrendered, but some soldiers and pro-government militiamen were holding out, residents and UN sources said.
People in several neighbourhoods reported small arms fire and some loud explosions on Tuesday morning.
“I have heard the crackle of gunfire from midnight until now ... it is coming from near the airport,” an elderly woman in Goma’s northern Majengo neighbourhood, close to the airport, told Reuters by phone.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told a briefing in Geneva colleagues had reported “heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets.”
“We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property ... and humanitarian health facilities being hit,” he added.
Willy Ngumbi, a bishop in Goma, said explosives had hit a house where priests were staying and the maternity ward of a Catholic hospital on Monday.
“The town is a powderkeg,” he said by phone. “The youth are armed and the fighting is now taking place in the town.”
