Rubber, Congo-Panic swept the second largest city in the east of the Congo on Saturday when residents fled for thousands, struggling to escape the imminent advance of the rebels backed by Rwanda.
The morning after M23 fighters entered the outskirts of Bukavu, a city of approximately 1.3 million people who are 63 miles (101 kilometers) south of rubber controlled by the rebels, some streets were flooded by residents who were trying to leave and looters who fill bags of flour with what they could find. A silence of silence was later established in the day when residents and business owners prepared for what comes next.
Most people waited at home, surprised while the bodies burned with the ashes lay scattered on the streets, victims of the looters who filled the void left by Congolese soldiers before leaving their positions.
“They put fire to the ammunition that they could not carry with them,” said Alain Iragi, among the residents who fled in search of security on Saturday.
The reports and social media videos showed the factories of the region looted and the emptied prisons while the electricity remained on and the communication lines were opened in most places.
“It’s a misfortune. Some citizens have been victims of lost bullets. Even some soldiers still present in the city are involved in mass in these cases of looting, ”he told The Associated Press a 25 -year resident from neighborhood to The Associated Press.
The Congo River Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups that includes M23, blamed the Congolese troops and their allies of the local militia and Burundi neighboring for the disorder in Bukavu.
“We call on the population to keep control of their city and not give in to panic,” said Lawrence Kanyuka, spokesman for the Alliance, in a statement on Saturday.
The rebels push south after taking rubber last month
M23, a rebel group backed by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, is the most prominent of more than 100 competing for the control of the east rich in Congo minerals.
Congolese authorities and international observers have accused him of sexual violence, forced recruitment and summary executions. The expansion to the south of M23 covers more territory than the rebels had previously taken and raises an unprecedented challenge to the central government in Kinshasa.
The rebellion in progress has killed almost 3,000 people in the east of the Congo and stranded hundreds of thousands of displaced. At least 350,000 displaced people internally have no refuge, UN authorities have said and the Congolese.
The rebels also claimed to have taken a second airport in the region, in the city of Kavumu on the outskirts of Bukavu.
The AP could not confirm who had control of the strategically important airport, that the Congolese forces have used to replenish troops and humanitarian groups to import help. The Alliance of the Congo River said on Saturday that M23 had taken control of the airport to prevent the Congolese forces from launching air attacks against civilians.
Government officials and local civil society leaders did not comment immediate Violence in Bukavu.
The looting and disorder reports arrive a day after the residents told the AP that the soldiers in Kavumu, the city of the airport north of Bukavu, had abandoned their positions to go to the city. The event chain reflects what happened last month in the period prior to the capture of rubber of the M23. The Army of the Congo, despite its size and financing, has been hindered by deficiencies in training and coordination and recurring corruption reports.
African leaders care about the conflict could extend
International leaders are expected to discuss the conflict at the Summit of the African Union in Ethiopia this weekend while the president of the Congo, Félix Tshisekedi, continues to beg the international community to intervene to contain the rebels and the blacklist “expansionist “Rwanda for supporting them. Tshisekedi was not at the summit.
However, African leaders and the international community have been reluctant to take decisive measures against M23 or Rwanda.
In Addis Abeba on Saturday, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, warned about the spiral conflict in a regional conflagration.
“The regional climbing should be avoided at all costs,” Guterres told the Summit of the African Union. “The sovereignty and territorial integrity of (Congo) must be respected.”
Although Guterres said that the solution to the conflict was in Africa, African leaders do not agree on how to resolve the conflict in a way that satisfies the parties at war.
Despite the so -called universal for a high fire, the rebellion has inflamed historical tensions within the region of the great lakes.
Burundi’s troops and the Development Community of Southern Africa are deployed in support of the Congolese forces. Uganda troops are fighting other rebel groups in other regions of the East of Congo, where attacks against civilians have been reported in recent months.
In Ituri, hundreds of kilometers north of where M23 is on the fly, the Ugandes troops are hunting members of the Allied Islamist democratic forces.
The fight risked severe climbing on Saturday. Muhozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s main military commander, told all the armed forces in the capital of the province that they had 24 hours to surrender and warned that he would soon be under the control of the Uganda army.
“If they do not, we will consider them enemies and attack them,” Kainerugaba said in an X publication, without identifying the other forces.
