At the foot of the extinct volcano Mikeno, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, entire villages are deserted. Their inhabitants fled violent clashes this week between the army and the ex-rebels of the “M23”, which would have killed around thirty soldiers.
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“We buried 30 bodies of soldiers yesterday (Thursday)” at the Rumangabo military camp, near the Virunga national park, Jean Bosco Kazibat, a member of the local Red Cross, told AFP. “Two others, officers, were brought back to Goma”, capital of the province of North Kivu, about fifty km to the south, he adds.
Local sources established Wednesday at more than twenty soldiers, including a colonel, killed in the night from Monday to Tuesday in the attack on an army position in Nyesisi, in the territory of Rutshuru, attributed to the “March 23 movement”.
The armed forces of the DRC (FARDC) did not communicate on this assessment, but evoked on the social networks their response “to the heavy weapon” having targeted the hills temporarily occupied by the rebels.
According to civil society representatives, the rebels also lost men, but, they say, it is impossible to know how many because they buried them before withdrawing.
The M23, also known as the “Revolutionary Army of Congo”, comes from a former Congolese Tutsi rebellion in North Kivu, formerly supported by Rwanda and Uganda, countries bordering this province which have been plagued for more than 25 years by the violence of many armed groups.
Defeated in 2013 by the Congolese army, the M23 has been in the news since early November, when it was accused of attacking several military positions.
“We don’t know where we are going to live”
Monday night’s attack “took place around midnight, I fled with my wife and seven children, leaving everything in the house. The houses of my neighbors were destroyed by bombs, we don’t know where we are going to live…”, testifies Jean de Dieu Ndibaganira, 52, resident of the village of Ngugo, refugee with his family in the neighboring town of Rugari .
A hundred families are settled there, in a primary school and in the parish. Life is organized somehow. Young children play football, mothers cook on the floor in small saucepans.
“Today we have more than 8,000 households who have fled the clashes,” explains Eric Mashagiro Ngaruye, head of the grouping (administrative entity) of Rugari, asking for assistance from humanitarian organizations.
Other families, deprived of everything, went to Kibumba, in the territory of Nyiragongo. The fighting lasted two days, calm has returned, but the villagers fear new attacks and are not ready to return home.
The villages of Bukima, Nyesisi, Ruhanga, Mukefu, Ngungo, Gekere, Butaka and others are empty. In Nyesisi as in Ngungo, the doors of the houses were broken down, everything inside was looted. Only worthless items are visible in the courtyards.
Past agreements
“I only fled with this loincloth and this blouse when the M23 attacked at night”, shows Odette Baraka, mother of 10 children. She accuses “Rwandan soldiers” of this attack and says she fears being killed by “Tutsi rebels”.
“To say that (these rebels) are associated with Rwanda is nonsense!” Protested Rwandan President Paul Kagame in an interview with the magazine Jeune Afrique published on Friday.
Some villagers say that the M23 men told them they did not want to occupy the country, but to be integrated into the Congolese army, in accordance with agreements concluded in the past, but, they say, not respected.
In the Nyesisi military camp, which the AFP team was not allowed access to, reinforcements were sent after the attack earlier this week. The UN mission in the DRC (Monusco) has set up temporary bases in the Rugari groupement, including one in the school housing displaced people.
Moïse Nizingi, 25, is pessimistic about the ability of the UN force to restore calm. “We are asking the government to send forces,” he pleaded.
North Kivu and neighboring Ituri province have been under siege since last May, a move that empowers the army and police, but has so far failed to end the violence .