And suddenly a deluge of fire: in the east of the DRC, the flash fall of Goma: News

A baroud of honor and a bloodbath. Goma, a city symbol of the conflict that has been tearing the eastern DRC for over thirty years, fell last week, in the space of a few days, after a violent assault by the M23 armed group and Rwandan troops.
In early January, an offensive on the capital of the province of North Kivu, which houses more than a million inhabitants, almost as many refugees and thousands of humanitarian and UN staff, is still considered improbable.
But disturbing signals accumulate. The clashes have continued to intensify in the region. After conquered the port of Minova, the M23 and the Rwandan army tighten their embrace on Goma, stuck between Lake Kivu and the Rwanda border.
Several AFP journalists located in Goma were witnesses to the capture of the city.
On January 23, the front is still held on the Sake plain, the last lock to the west. Congolese army helicopters are turning by dropping rocket salvan.
Reinforcements columns have been on the way from Goma under the cheers of displaced civilians from the neighboring camps to attend the scene, while the detonations resonate.
Congolese soldiers, local militiamen nicknamed “Wazalendo” (“patriots” in Swahili), armored vehicles of the United Nations mission in the DRC (Monusco), heavy artillery of the Southern African Regional Forces (Samirdc), Romanian paramilitary, try to contain the ‘offensive.
Faced with the M23 and the Rwandan troops deemed to be much higher in equipment and training, the Congolese army (FARDC) has continued to retreat from 2021, to the point of being trapped in the city.
In the morning, a few units of Rwandan soldiers routing thousands of Congolese soldiers and militiamen near Sake. The military governor of the North Kivu province was killed as he was trying to catch up with fugitives.
The ephemeral counter-offensive of the afternoon of January 23 on Sake will be the last.
On January 25, an assault on Goma was deemed imminent. NGOs and the UN evacuated their non -essential staff in the morning. On the volcanic plain of Sake, the road leading to the front consumed men and materials, and spitting only convoys of wounded and clusters of laggarts claudifying under a rainy sky.
A UN armored vehicle smokes on the aisle, the roof exhausted by a projectile. The peacekeepers and the Samirdc soldiers pay a heavy tribe – at least 19 were killed.
Mined by the corruption and the incompetence of his command, the FARDC seem unable to resist. And it is on the north front, where the Monusco and the Samirdc are almost absent, that the M23 finds the fault.
– stampede –
On January 26, Goma wakes up at the sound of bombs. The Rwandan forces crossed the border in the back of the Congolese army which still holds its positions north of Goma with the help of Romanian paramilitary.
The fights burst in the middle of the disadvantaged and densely populated neighborhoods. A rain of bullets and shells falls on the refugee civilians in their homes, rarely built in hard.
The Congolese forces cut off from their lines refuse to the city center. Noting the stampede of the army that they are supposed to support, the peacekeepers cease combat operations to focus on the protection of civilians.
At nightfall, the streets are deserted. Cleasted inhabitants. Deprived of any means of communication due to the cut of the Internet network and telephone, they spend a night of anxiety, while the shots resonate all around.
The following morning, on January 27, a revolt broke out in Goma prison, close to the airport. The prisoners smash the doors of the cells and light fires. Many of them remain stuck inside the building delivered to the propagating fire. Out of 157 detainees from the Women’s district, less than twenty manage to escape.
In the city center, the units that still hold their positions discover that they have been abandoned. The majority of senior officers fled by boat on Lake Kivu during the night. Delivered to themselves, their soldiers have nowhere to flee.
At the end of 2012, the M23 had briefly seized with Goma, and had left a corridor to the Congolese forces to facilitate their exit. This time, nothing like it: the trap closes on the forces of Kinshasa.
Columns of scouring men wander in the streets, looking for a way out. But in the city center, a few units decide to hold their positions and oppose resistance as fierce as it is unexpected.
– Fire flood –
Some units even dare to attack the city of Gisenyi, binocula of Goma, on the Rwandan side. The Rwandan army retaliated. A flood of fire falls on both sides of the border, in posh districts where no one expected to see fights.
Others resist the slopes of Mont Goma, a volcanic hill overlooking the port and the HQ of the Congolese army in the region. But they are dislodged by columns of Rwandan soldiers in the afternoon, after intense bombardments.
The FARDC who still try to flee with the last boats find themselves under enemy fire. Desperate, they jump into the dark water of the lake whipped by the gusts of automatic weapons.
On the morning of January 28, clashes continue, but the observers are formal: the city of Goma fell, even if pockets of resistance remain, especially around the airport still run by South African forces and Congolese soldiers At the cost of violent fights.
Elsewhere in town, M23 fighters and Rwandan soldiers carry out a methodical sweeping, unraveling the isolated elements Ruelle by Ruelle.
Taking advantage of this respite, thousands of Congolese soldiers and Romanian paramilitary rushes in front of the Dases of the Monusco bases to find refuge.
The city streets are covered with the debris left by the stampede. Pickups riddled with balls, helmets, uniforms, automatic rifle chargers …
Bandits, militiamen or soldiers disguised as civilians, recover thousands of abandoned weapons and hide them in the neighborhoods.
Many civilians also benefit from disorder and loot shops, supermarkets and humanitarian warehouses.
Thousands of injured pile up in overwhelmed hospitals. Hundreds of corpses litter the streets. The morgues saturate.
The inhabitants of Goma, almost cut off from the world, wake up struck.
Congolese soldiers and militiamen have vanished. The new masters parade in columns ordered in the greyish streets of the bruised city.
The uncertainty of the next day resonates in the timid applause of the inhabitants who came to welcome them.