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January 30, 2025
World

DRC’s Goma on the brink as M23 fighters take airport

An armed group backed by Rwandan troops took control of the airport in the besieged DR Congo city of Goma yesterday, a security source said, dealing a major blow to Congolese forces and putting the eastern regional capital on the brink of falling.
The main city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has become a battleground since fighters from the Tutsi-led M23 armed group and Rwandan forces entered central Goma on Sunday night after a weeks-long advance through the region.
Days of intense fighting involving mortars and gunfire have left bodies in the streets in Goma, AFP footage showed, while columns of M23 fighters could be seen marching through the eastern provincial capital.
It has not been clear which parts of Goma were under the control of Congolese forces or the Rwandan-backed M23, which claimed it had taken the city on Sunday night.
But a security source told AFP that M23 fighters had taken the airport yesterday, adding that “more than 1,200 Congolese soldiers have surrendered and are confined” to the airport base of the UN’s mission in DRC.
The lightning offensive marks a major escalation in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich east, which has been plagued by fighting between armed groups backed by regional rivals since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
It has also triggered a spiralling humanitarian crisis, with the UN warning about hundreds of thousands forced from their homes, serious food shortages, looted aid, overwhelmed hospitals and the potential spread of disease.
The streets of Goma, a city of one million which sits on the shores of Lake Kivu and on the border with Rwanda, were almost deserted on Tuesday after heavy fighting the day before.
Destin Jamaica Kela, one of around 1,200 people in Goma registered by Rwanda to have fled over the border in the last 24 hours, told AFP that “things changed very fast”.

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