Furious mobs stoned UN peacekeepers’ compounds on Monday and thousands of desperate people fled advancing rebel troops as chaos returned to eastern Congo, fueled by festering hatreds left over from the Rwandan genocide and the country’s unrelenting civil wars.
UN spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg said later in the day that UN peacekeepers in helicopters fired at rebel forces surging on Kibumba, about 45km north of the provincial capital of Goma.
In what appeared to be a major retreat, hundreds of government soldiers pulled back from the battlefront north of Goma — fleeing any way possible, including using tanks, jeeps and commandeered cars. Soldiers honked their horns angrily as they struggled to push through throngs of displaced people on the main road.
PHOTO: EPA
Crowds of protesters threw rocks outside four UN compounds in Goma, venting outrage at what they claimed was a failure to protect them from rebels.
The UN said the commander of the embattled Congo peacekeeping force resigned on Monday after just a month. And Congo’s president appointed a new Cabinet, including a new defense minister, and charged it with being “a combat government to re-establish peace.”
Renegade General Laurent Nkunda has threatened to take Goma despite calls from the UN Security Council for him to respect a ceasefire brokered by the UN in January. Nkunda charges that the Congolese government has not protected his minority Tutsi tribe from a Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping perpetrate the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Half a million Tutsis were slaughtered.
Rebel spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa said on Monday that rebel fighters were within 11km of Goma.
Residents of Katindo, a neighborhood 5km from downtown Goma, said they heard bombs exploding late on Monday afternoon.
Tens of thousands of civilians abandoned their homes ahead of the rebel advance. By nightfall, women and children lay down on roadsides made muddy by tropical downpours, stretching out to try to sleep. Some had mats or plastic sheets; others simply dropped, exhausted, to the earth.
The civilians and soldiers were surging south from a major army base seized by the rebels on Sunday. As the crowds reached Goma, soldiers blocked access to the northern entrance, apparently fearing that rebels could be trying to infiltrate with the displaced civilians.
People are furious that the UN peacekeeping mission — the biggest in the world with 17,000 troops — has been unable to protect them from the rebels. The UN said on Friday that more than 200,000 people had fled their homes in eastern Congo, with 15,000 on Sunday.
Tens of thousands fled on Monday.
Thousands of terrified and angry residents, including some from refugee camps, attacked all four UN compounds in Goma on Monday, lobbing stones over the wall.
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