Medical doctor Nathaniel Cirho was injured after a bomb fell on his neighbour’s house. When I first drove into DR Congo’s eastern city of Goma, it was hard for me to tell I had entered a conflict zone. Goma residents filled the streets a few miles from the border with Rwanda – commuters headed to work, hawkers sold goods by the roadside and taxi drivers scrambled to win customers. But it only took a few minutes to notice there was a new “government” in town. As I reached a checkpoint near a police post formerly run by the Congolese authorities, gun-toting fighters from the M23 rebel group stopped my car. Last week M23 had captured Goma, an eastern city of nearly two million people, after a lighting advance in DR Congo’s eastern region. At least 700 people in the city were killed and close to 3,000 injured as the rebels clashed with DR Congo’s army and its allies, according to the UN and the Congolese government. M23, which is made up of ethnic Tutsis, say they are fighting for minority rights, while DR Congo’s government says they are seeking control of the eastern region’s vast mineral wealth.
Source link
