Chaos as Rwanda-backed rebels push toward eastern DR Congo’s second major city
The Congo River Alliance is a coalition of rebel groups that includes M23.
Panic swept through eastern DR Congo’s second largest city as residents fled to escape the looming advance of Rwanda-backed rebels.
Amid chaos and looting, Bukavu braced for what comes next.
A day after M23 fighters entered the outskirts of Bukavu — a city of about 1.3 million people that lies 63 miles south of rebel-held Goma — some streets were flooded by residents attempting to leave and looters filling flour sacks with what they could find.
Most people waited in their home, shocked by what had filled vacuum left by Congolese soldiers who had abandoned their posts.
“They set fire to the ammunition they were unable to take with them,” said Alain Iragi, among the residents who fled in search of safety on Saturday.
Reports and social media videos showed the region’s factories pillaged and prisons emptied while electricity remained on and communication lines open.
“It’s a disgrace. Some citizens have fallen victim to stray bullets. Even some soldiers still present in the city are involved en masse in these cases of looting,” a 25-year-old resident of a neighbuorhood being looted told The Associated Press.
The Congo River Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups that includes M23, blamed Congolese troops and their allies from local militia and neighbouring Burundi for the disorder in Bukavu.
“We call on the population to remain in control of their city and not give in to panic,” Lawrence Kanyuka, the alliance’s spokesperson, said in a statement on Saturday.
M23, a militia backed by about 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, is the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control of DR Congo’s mineral-rich east.
Congolese authorities and international observers have accused it of sexual violence, forced conscription and summary executions.
M23’s southward expansion encompasses more territory than rebels had previously seized and poses an unprecedented challenge to the central government in Kinshasa.
The rebellion under way has killed at least 2,000 people in eastern DR Congo and stranded hundreds of thousands of displaced.
At least 350,000 internally displaced people are without shelter, the UN and Congolese authorities have said.
The rebels on Friday also claimed to have seized a second airport in the region, in the town of Kavumu outside Bukavu.
