DRC: Military chief killed as M23 rebels close in on Goma in eastern DRC
The military governor of North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has died from injuries sustained during the army’s fight against the M23 rebel group as it advances towards the city of Goma. Maj Gen Peter Cirimwami Nkuba, who led the province since 2023, died after being shot near the frontline on Thursday, government and UN sources told various news agencies. The circumstances around his death remain unclear, but Cirimwami, who led army operations in the province, was visiting troops in Kasangezi, around eight miles from Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu province. More than 178,000 people have been displaced in the past two weeks alone as the M23 gained swathes of territory in eastern DRC. On Friday it was clashing with the army outside Goma. The UK, US and France urged citizens to leave the city, warning the situation could deteriorate rapidly. Late on Friday, the United Nations mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (Monusco) said that its peacekeepers were engaged in “intense” fighting against M23 forces. Earlier this month, the rebels captured the towns of Minova, Katale and Masisi. On Tuesday, they took control of Minova, a vital trade hub for Goma about 30 miles from the city. Two days later, they captured Sake, a town about 15 miles from Goma. The advance has caused panic in eastern DRC, with bombs being heard going off in Goma’s outskirts and hundreds of wounded civilians brought in to the main hospital from the area of the fighting on Thursday. Thousands of displaced people reached the outskirts of Goma as they fled the rebel advance. Congolese helicopter gunships swooped low over the plains to fire volleys of rockets, and troops trucked towards the frontline to halt the rebels. Trucks loaded with soldiers and pulling cannon passed by, followed by a spluttering Soviet tank. Many Sake residents fled the M23 advance. Thousands of people escaped the fighting by boat on Wednesday, making their way north across Lake Kivu and spilling out of packed wooden boats in Goma, some with bundles of their belongings on their heads. Neema Matondo said she had fled Sake during the night, when the first explosions started. She recounted seeing people around her torn to pieces and killed. “We escaped, but unfortunately others did not,” Matondo said. Mariam Nasibu, who fled Sake with her three children, was in tears – one of her children had lost a leg, blown off by shelling. “As I continued to flee, another bomb fell in front of me, hitting my child,” she said. Decades-long fighting among regional armies and rebels in DRC has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with about 6 million people killed since 1998 and more than 7 million displaced internally. Follow link for full story...