After a week of fighting, the rebels supported by Rwanda have almost torn off total control over Goma, a city of two million in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hospitals are overflowing with wounded and the city’s morgue with the dead. Goma residents are starting to emerge from their hiding places, desperately looking for water and food. And the Congolese army which was supposed to protect them was defeated.
Thursday, in a courtyard outside the largest stadium in Goma, the rebels with the M23 militia supported by Rwanda loaded more than 1,000 soldiers than they had captured in trucks, where men stood together. Most of them wore the uniforms in which they were captured. Many of them were furious.
But the curses they spit were not directed against their captors; On the contrary, in Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president, whom they accused of selling them, and the military commanders who had abandoned them. Their commanders, as well as representatives of the government, had left their vehicles, seen in videos and photographs, and mounted on boats in the early hours of Monday morning while M23 arrived in the city, escaping through a lake Enlightened by the moon while letting their men fight alone.
Many truck soldiers had fought, alongside armed groups known locally under the name of Wazalendo. But no strengthening has been sent.
“Tshisekedi will pay for it,” said a soldier.
“We will capture it with our own hands,” said another.
