On a road west of Goma, the largest city in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mary Ashuza and her children worked, carrying their last remaining effects with them.
Ashuza, farmer and mother of five children in his forties, fled north of his home in the neighboring province of Kivu Sud in mid-January, after the M23 rebels supported by Rwanda advanced clashes advanced between the armed group and the Congolese army.
“The armed forces of the DRC installed a heavy artillery in my village, in Minova. I saw a neighboring family massacred. This is why I fled here to Goma, ”she told Al Jazeera.
The family ended up in one of the tentacular camps for displaced people, but after soldiers of the March 23 movement (M23) invaded the city a week ago, affirming control, they were again fled with thousands of others.
At first, she stayed with one of the host families in the local community who had opened their doors to other civilians. But she has since decided to leave Goma for good – largely due to a lack of help and help.
The United Nations, assistance organizations and rights defense groups claim that the recent climbing of fighting has interrupted the essential work of humanitarian agencies in the DRC.
The destruction of sites for internal displaced people (PDI) also forced a lot to return to their places of origin, with at least 100,000 PDI having left Goma last week. Some camps are now emptied of people, witnesses said.
Many of those who now come back from Goma have been forced to flee their towns and villages among the fighting. Some feared being taken in the cross fires; Others feared the abuses committed by the rebels, the army and its allied militia of Wazalendo. Some residents said they were witness to looting, rape and shots.
“I left Mont Goma [area of the city] head for the port of Goma to flee. I suspected that the enemy quickly advanced to the city. It is a very dangerous place, “said a woman, the wife of a Congolese army soldier, who was heading with children through the center of Goma, is afraid that she is targeted by the troops of M23.
Take-over M23
It was late on Sunday January 26, 2025, under the guise of darkness when the M23 fighters headed for Goma, after intense fights which had opposed them to the Congolese army and his allies.
Amateur videos circulating online have shown that columns of men in military costume are generally not seen in the region walking in certain parts of the city.
M23 published a statement announcing that the “liberation” of the city had been “successful”.
Despite some resistance from the Congolese army and the Wazelendo Allied militias on Thursday, Goma was under the control of M23, the rebels advancing south in the direction of Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, and promising to walk to to the capital of the DRC, Kinshasa.
The M23, which emerged for the first time in 2012, was briefly defeated until it reappeared in 2022, entering the territory in the DRC of the East, causing a crisis in major travel.
UN experts say M23 is supported by thousands of neighboring Rwanda soldiers, who, according to Kinshasa, is trying to plunder the resources of the eastern region rich in DRC. Rwanda denied the allegations that it is the M23 sponsor.
Since M23 said Goma said more than 700 people were killed on January 26 and nearly 3,000 were injured, officials said.
The city became a “real center” of human despair last week, according to some of its inhabitants.
“Everything stopped in the city,” a resident of the Ndosho district, one of the most densely populated areas in Goma, told Al Jazeera.
“We do not know which way to turn and what will become our future, which has already been darkened by the encirclement of the city.”
Power and looting cuts
While the fighting was raging, the Internet was cut, just like electricity and water supply. Stores and businesses have also been closed.
Tuesday and Wednesday, some residents began to loot – a lot of despair.
A WORLD FOOD PROGRAM (WFP) warehouse of the UN, located about 2 km (1.2 mile) from downtown Goma, has been ransacked and all food and non-food items were taken.
In the south-east of Goma, in the district of Kyeshero, the prosecutor’s office was ransacked and all the documents it contained strewn from the west outskirts of the city.
Amuri Upendo, a resident of Goma who participated in the looting, said that he had done it by Survival.
“We are in a period of war, and everything is worse. I had nothing to eat, I made the shelter to five displaced people and when I heard that the global food program was looted, I left to get my package, “he said, revealing that there was then a stampede on the warehouse which caused certain deaths.
“I saw three people fall from the shelves and lose my life during the looting scenes. It really terrified me, “he said.
A week after the capture of Goma, with M23 now fully in charge, electricity and internet connections, which had been cut for days, were returned to most of the city.
Many stores have also reopened in the city center. Food products were on the shelves, but the prices of certain items had doubled or even tripled.
“I ask the new authorities to do everything possible to stabilize the situation here,” said Julienne Anifa, mother of seven purchases at the Goma Alanine Market. “We buy various products at a high price. And this affects us economically during this period of war. »»
During a press conference in Goma on Thursday, Corneille Nangaa, coordinator of the Fleue Congo (AFC) alliance to which M23 belongs, reassured the city residents that life would soon return to normal.
Elsewhere, the families of those who lost their lives during the week of violence planned to bury their loved ones.
‘I go home’
Although the Congolese army and its allies have lost control of the city, and a tense calm now surrounds it, all the inhabitants of Goma are not worried.
For their part, the residents who spoke in Al Jazeera seemed to fall into three main camps. Some said they felt relieved because there was now less military presence and a less militarized feeling in the city that has been on counterparts for months while the rebels have advanced and moved people from other parts in the city.
Other residents have simply decided to accept what happened, believing that they cannot change their situation so that they can work as well in the system governed by the new occupants of the city.
However, the third group is more afraid – fearing that, while the national authorities of Kinshasa promise a counter -offensive to take up Goma, a new assault will only make losses.
For many residents, what matters most is to ensure peace and tranquility.
“No matter who controls the city, the most important thing for me is to be able to live in security, to move … and to have a little money for my family,” said Faraja Joseph, 40 years old, Father of five children.
The Congolese government has promised to regain control of Goma, but the experts and the inhabitants fear that the delicate location of the city – near an active volcano, on the banks of Lake Kivu, and next to the Rwandan border – will make it difficult to recover militarily.
World and regional leaders have condemned the takeover of the M23 and the presumed participation of Rwanda, urging dialogue to find a diplomatic solution to the growing conflict, which, according to the defense groups, is to create a “Humanitarian disaster”. The UN also accused the M23 and the Congolese army of serious human rights violations.
Meanwhile, while high -level fights and diplomacy continue, civilians in eastern DRC continue to seek apparently elusive security.
For the thousands of doubly moved people who walked along the roads of Goma, fleeing from old camps and reception communities again, coming back from where they come is often the only comfort they can find.
“I go home to my village,” said Ashuza, the mother of five children from South Kivu, in Al Jazeera. “I prefer to die in Minova, near my family and my land, instead of dying far away [away here in Goma]”She said, her children wearing cooking tools and other personal effects, one of them without shoes on his feet, while they continued towards the territory of Masisi and beyond.
