After a week of fighting, the rebels supported by Rwanda took over almost complete control over Gom, a city of two million in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The hospitals are full of wounded and the city dead with the dead. The residents of Goma begin to leave their hiding places, desperately looking for water and food. And the Congolese army that was supposed to protect them was defeated.
On Thursday, in the yard outside Gom’s largest stadium, the rebels with the M23 militia supported M23 loaded more than 1,000 soldiers who captured the truck beds, where men stood packed together. Most wore uniforms in which they were captured. Many of them were angry.
But curses that spit were not directed toward their kidnappers; Instead, in Felix Tshiseeked, the Congoon president, who was accused of selling them, and with the military commanders who left them. Their commanders, together with government officials, left behind their vehicles, seen in videos and photos, and boarded the boats in the early hours on Monday morning while M23 arrived in town, fleeing through the lake illuminated by moonlight while leaving their people to fight alone.
Many soldiers fought in trucks, along with armed groups that are locally known as Wazalendo. But no reinforcement was sent.
“Tshiseekedi will pay for it,” one soldier shouted.
“We’ll catch him with his own hands,” another said.
“God will bring him back,” another shouted.
Commander 231 of the Congenian Army Infantry Battalion – known for the French Akronimi, Fardc – climbed from the cabin of one of the trucks, where his internship earned him a comfortable place. The captured commander, Lieutenant John Asegi, explained that they had no choice but to surrender. M23 took them somewhere to give them training, he said, adding that now their new masters will do everything their new masters are commanded.
“If we are sent to fight Fardc,” he said, “we will fight against Fardc”
While the M23 rebels walked around the yard, preparing to leave the truck, they looked more like an army with their grenades, tiredness and helmets, while Congoon soldiers looked like a tired, ragtag rebel group.
The rebels, who already control the huge tracts of conago -rich minerals, said they plan to march to the capital, Kinshas, almost a thousand miles in the west and take over the whole country.
The rebels have already surrendered to Rwanda with hundreds of trapped Romanian mercenaries who fought along with Congolian forces.
Hundreds of civilians stood around a truck full of soldiers, watching this reversal of the role and looked at the men who were now in charge. A dozen women and children cried relentlessly, they just noticed their husbands and fathers among men in trucks.
“I don’t know where to lead him,” she cried Marie Sifa, who had a girl on her back and three other children. She was from Physical, 270 miles south of Goma, she said, and last week she lost everything in the attack on Minovo. They sought refuge at school, but they couldn’t stay.
“We are expelled from school,” Mrs. Sifa said, crying as if she were in mourning. “How will I survive? How will I bring those children back to the physical? “
Later on Thursday, the leader of the rebels, Corneille Nanga, gave citizens Goma the taste of their new reality under a powerful militia – which Some experts say It has 6,000 soldiers in Eastern Congo, a backed by up to 4,000 Rwanda troops.
“Return to normal activities,” Mr. Nanga said to the residents of Gom at a two -hour press conference at a local hotel. It was won by men in helmets and battle equipment.
But the situation in the crowd, a city built around the black streams of Lava from a nearby living volcano, is far from normal.
Dead bodies lie on the streets. Trade, supermarkets and humanitarian agencies warehouses are oppanis. Cholera breaks out. People with bullet wounds – those who survived – finally manage to get to the clinic for treatment, just to find the lack of drug and surgical staff.
And many families who have separated while they have escaped are yet to be found.
Elysée Mopanda lost her two children in chaos. The rebels held their husband, a soldier, a prisoner. The events of the past week left their family in the ruins.
“I don’t know where to go,” she said.
Wounded, trembling, hungry, thirsty or lost, many are the inhabitants of Goma in an extremely insecure situation.
The most vulnerable gom is displaced by the population, which has hundreds of thousands.
For more than a year, people have escaped rebel progress through the rural and small cities of Eastern Congo, seeking a refuge in the UI around Gom, in broader, irrelying camps that are especially dangerous for women and girls.
As the M23 closed in these camps last week, thousands of people who barely survived were escaped out of the conflict there, carrying little they had on their heads to the crowd, which would soon be overcome.
Three families who fled one of the camps right outside Gom hid in Education CenterSurvivors to some beans and rice.
Without that kindness, “I don’t know how to survive,” said Furaha Kabasele, a 34-year-old mother whose youngest child is only 5 months old.
They survived this dangerous week. But they have no idea what they will do now.
For many, the smallest need of water is. The city supply of water, as well as its power and the internet, was cut during the Battle of Goma, and those who managed to save some watched it disappeared during the week. Those who did not have water tried to ask her from those who did or pay for the hawk for as much as $ 5.20 for Jerrycan, which usually costs 20 cents.
As the struggles extinguished, hundreds of people went to the edge of Lake Kivo to collect water, adding some chlorine to try to retain the diseases that take place on the bay.
One of those waters on Thursday morning was a tailor of a mule, 13, who brought two colored yellow Jerrycans to the lake, took off his flip-flops and dived into a glittering lake. While the fighting flashed, his family ran out of drinking water.
“We couldn’t leave the house because of the crackles and bombs that fall,” he said.
He filled the can and struggled to pull them out of the lake.
