(Goma) The army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Saturday accused Rwanda of having attacked with “drones” the airport of Goma, in the east of the country, a region scene of fighting against the rebellion of the M23 supported by Kigali.
“During the night, at 2 a.m. local time (7 p.m. Eastern time), the attack drones of the Rwandan army, which obviously left Rwandan territory, violated the territorial limits” of the DRC, declared Lieutenant-Colonel Guillaume Ndjike, spokesperson for the Congolese army for North Kivu.
“In view of the trajectories followed by the shots of these drones”, they “targeted the aircraft” of the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC), he added, in a video broadcast by the communications service of the provincial governor.
“The FARDC aircraft were not hit”, but it was “rather the civilian planes which were damaged”, he added, without specifying how many aircraft were affected or how many projectiles had been fired. During the night, residents of Goma, including an AFP correspondent, heard two loud explosions.
Despite this incident, Goma international airport operated normally on Saturday, according to sources on site.
“Activities are running normally. There, I am serving my customers,” a merchant installed at the entrance to the airport told AFP, while travelers were arriving with their luggage to catch their plane.
The province of North Kivu, of which Goma is the capital, has been gripped since the end of 2021 by a conflict between the M23 (“March 23 Movement”), supported by units of the Rwandan army, and the Congolese army associated in particular with so-called “patriot” armed groups and two foreign private military companies.
Several thousand soldiers and militiamen are engaged, as well as artillery, Sukhoi-25 fighter planes and drones. According to a UN document consulted by AFP, the Rwandan army also uses sophisticated weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles in its support of the M23.
Mini-summit in Addis Ababa
The M23 is a predominantly Tutsi rebellion which took up arms again at the end of 2021 after several years of dormancy and has since seized large parts of North Kivu.
A conurbation of more than a million inhabitants, to which were added several hundred thousand displaced people driven from their homes by the fighting, Goma is wedged between Lake Kivu to the south and the Rwandan border to the east. The city is currently practically cut off from all its land access routes to the interior of the DRC, to the north and west.
The DRC accuses Rwanda and its “auxiliaries” of the M23 of wanting to take control of the minerals of eastern Congolese. The M23, for its part, claims to defend a threatened segment of the population and demands negotiations, which Kinshasa refuses, excluding discussions with “terrorists”.
About ten days ago, fighting intensified in Sake, a town located about twenty kilometers west of Goma and considered a last “block” on the road to the provincial capital.
According to various sources, there were dozens of dead and injured, civilians and soldiers.
On Thursday, the South African army announced that two of its men, integrated into a regional force from southern Africa which has just deployed in the region, had been killed and three others injured.
Diplomatic initiatives launched to resolve the crisis have so far yielded nothing.
On the sidelines of the African Union (AU) summit being held this weekend in Addis Ababa, Angolan President João Lourenço, AU mediator, brought together several African heads of state to discuss the situation in is from the DRC.
“He met separately with presidents (of DRC) Félix Tshisekedi and (of Rwanda) Paul Kagame,” the Congolese presidency said on Saturday on X, adding that Mr. Lourenço had “promised to continue his mediation in Luanda.”
Félix Tshisekedi was largely re-elected for a second term on December 20, after a campaign during which he threatened to declare war on Kigali and compared the Rwandan president to Adolf Hitler and his “expansionist aims”.