M23 insurgents in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) captured two more towns and reached the airport in the provincial capital of Bukavu on Friday, raising fears of a humanitarian disaster and criminal abuse of civilians.
UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, said on Thursday that gunmen in eastern Congo raped hundreds of women and children during the rebel conquest of Goma, a key city that fell to Rwanda-supported M23 forces two weeks ago.
According to UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell, the number of rape cases treated in hospitals across Goma increased by some 500 percent during the last week of January, when rebel forces breached the city.
Bukavu appeared to be the next likely rebel target after Goma was captured, although M23 spokesmen claimed there would be a pause in their campaign to allow humanitarian aid to reach the city. That pause was very brief, if it happened at all, because fighting was soon reported near Bukavu as M23 pushed south from Goma.
The rebels seized the towns of Katana and Kalehe on Friday. Katana is a commercial hub about seven miles from another strategic town called Kavumu, which contains Bukavu’s airport. Katana residents uploaded video of rebel soldiers immediately pushing on to Kavumu, where the airport was quickly shut down and much of its equipment removed.
M23 leaders said on Friday that the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) have abandoned Kavumu ahead of the rebel advance.
“As we have repeatedly stressed, we have eliminated the threat at the source. Kavumu airport posed a danger to the civilian population in the liberated areas and our positions,” M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said on Friday, portraying the insurgent militia as a “liberating” force and the FARDC as “oppressors.”
“From now on, Kavumu and its surroundings, including the airport, are under the control of the AFC/M23,” Kanyuka declared.
A growing number of FARDC troops appear to have retreated to the national capital of Kinshasa, which the rebels said they intend to capture, deposing President Felix Tshisekedi. Some unverified clips posted to social media appeared to show government forces defecting and joining the M23 conquerors in celebration.
Tshisekedi was in Germany on Friday, attending the Munich Security Conference, where he met with International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan to complain about Rwanda’s support for the M23 offensive.
Tshisekedi blasted Rwanda as the “real culprit of this situation” in his address to the security conference, accusing the DRC’s neighbor of harboring “expansionist ambitions” to seize the mineral-rich eastern Congo.
“We will no longer tolerate our strategic resources being plundered for the benefit of foreign interests under the complicit gaze of those who feed on chaos,” Tshisekedi said, implicitly threatening to cut off mineral leases for foreign companies unless the international community steps into thwart M23 and Rwanda.
“We will not accept simple words; we demand decisive action,” the DRC president said.
Tshisekedi will reportedly attend a meeting of the African Union (AU) on Saturday. The head of the AU commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, demanded a ceasefire in the Congo on Friday.
“There is a general mobilization of Africa today on this issue and I hope that we will be able to impose this ceasefire,” Mahamat said.
Bruno Lemarquis, the top U.N. humanitarian official in the Congo, warned on Friday that a humanitarian disaster looms as the front line of the insurgency sweeps toward Kavumu Airport, which the U.N. has been using to bring its personnel into South Kivu province.
Lemarquis said the situation in the province was already dire before the insurgent offensive, due to other “community tensions,” “tensions related to land,” natural disasters such as landslides, and a cholera outbreak.
The fighting is also pushing through the epicenter of a major monkeypox (mpox) outbreak. The more dangerous clade-1b variant of mpox is especially prevalent in Kalehe, one of the towns captured by the rebels.
Lemarquis said about 20 percent of South Kivu’s population has been displaced from their homes, including at least 170,000 displaced by the latest clashes between M23 and the FARDC.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo, MONUSCO, said Thursday that more than 870 civilians were killed in a late-night attack on a group of villages in the eastern Congo by another insurgent militia, CODECO.
According to MONUSCO, many of the civilians were killed with bladed weapons rather than firearms, so U.N. peacekeepers were not immediately aware of the attack. By the time peacekeepers arrived, the insurgents “had unfortunately already killed more than 80 civilians, set homes ablaze, and spread panic among the population.”
CODECO is a loosely organized militia drawn mostly from the Lendu tribe, while the civilians slaughtered on Thursday were from a rival tribe called the Djaiba. The day before the village massacre, CODECO reportedly attacked a refugee camp.
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