M23 rebels captured the airport in Goma, eastern Congo's largest city, potentially halting crucial aid deliveries to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The city fell to the rebels after an offensive that left dead bodies on the streets. Protests erupted in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, targeting UN facilities and embassies of countries perceived as supporting Rwanda.
Rebels seized the airport of east Congo 's largest city, Goma , on Tuesday, potentially cutting off the main route for aid to reach hundreds of thousands of displaced people, after capturing the city in an offensive that left dead bodies lying in the streets.· Congo lese civilians who fled Goma , eastern Congo 's largest city, following fighting between M23 rebels and the country's armed forces line up to register at a reception centre in Rugerero, near Gisenyi, Rwanda , on Tuesday.
Just across the border in Rwanda, trucks were unloading large numbers of people fleeing Goma with their children and bundles of possessions wrapped in pieces of fabric. "I have heard the crackle of gunfire from midnight until now ... it is coming from near the airport," an elderly woman in Goma's northern Majengo neighbourhood, close to the airport, told Reuters by phone.Rwanda-backed rebels claim control of key Congo cityM23 rebels claim they have captured Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, as the United Nations described a 'mass panic' among its two million people.
"We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property ... and humanitarian health facilities being hit," he said. Other international aid officials described hospitals overwhelmed, with wounded being treated in hallways.François Moreillon, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Congo, told Reuters a medicine warehouse had been looted and that he was concerned about a laboratory where dangerous germs, including ebola, were kept.
In Kinshasa, angry crowds chanted anti-Rwanda slogans and attacked embassies of several countries seen as favourable to Rwanda, setting fire to tires and buildings. The police fired tear gas to disperse them. Rwanda says some of the ousted perpetrators have been sheltering in Congo since the genocide, forming militias with alliances with the Congolese government, and pose a threat to Congolese Tutsis and Rwanda itself.The CurrentThe push to electrify our vehicles is driving a scramble for cobalt, which is almost exclusively mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We talk to Siddharth Kara, author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives.
CONGO REBELS M23 GOMA AID RWANDA PROTESTS HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
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