All posts tagged: Goma

Near Goma, displaced people begin long journey home

Near Goma, displaced people begin long journey home

GOMA, DRC —  Once crowded with white makeshift huts, the huge Kanyaruchinya camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Goma, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, looked eerily empty Sunday. Since Goma was taken by M23 fighters earlier this week, some 100,000 internally displaced people have left the jam-packed hillside where they had set up several years ago. The ongoing crisis in the eastern DRC continues to escalate, with tensions involving the Congolese government, and the M23 rebel group. The DRC government has officially designated the M23 rebel group as a terrorist organization, while the U.N. and the U.S. classify it as an armed rebel group. The DRC government has repeatedly accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebel group, a claim that Rwanda denies. Kigali, in turn, alleges that Kinshasa collaborates with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu armed group with ties to the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, an allegation the DRC rejects. Military operations in the region remain fluid, with clashes leading to significant displacement …

‘I feel my heart breaking into a thousand pieces’: Goma fills with refugees trying to flee fighting in DRC | Global development

‘I feel my heart breaking into a thousand pieces’: Goma fills with refugees trying to flee fighting in DRC | Global development

The doctors and nurses at Ndosho hospital in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are working round the clock with a stream of injured people arriving each day. People trying to escape the fighting between the rebel militia group M23 and government forces have been arriving in the regional capital of North Kivu province in their thousands over the past 10 days. Moustapha Ngabo, 36, is standing outside a ward, watching anxiously as doctors examine his two-year-old daughter. His shirt is splattered with her blood. “There was fighting between the M23 and the army in the hills,” he says. “We took nothing with us as we left.” Ngabo and his family have been displaced twice. First, they left their home village in the Masisi region of North Kivu to take refuge in Saké, a town about 15 miles from Goma. On 13 February, with rebels closing in and shells falling on the town, Ngabo and his wife made the decision to take their two children and run again. But they hadn’t made it …