(Reuters) – Fighters supported in the Rwanda joined the eastern Congo in the Goma and forced thousands of civilians to build flights from the local airport from the airport when the government forces fought to stop the rebels.
This month, the M23 rebel movement has made rapid progress this month in the mineral but conflict-controlled eastern border areas and fears that the fights in a regional war could exceed.
The UN Security Council should meet one day earlier than planned to discuss the crisis, said diplomats after 3 UN peacekeepers – two South Africans and one Uruguayan – were killed.
South African and UN authorities said that seven other South African soldiers and three from Malawi, which serve in a separate South African mission, were also killed this week.
Three years after their current uprising, the rebels, which the United Nations say, receive that they are supported by neighboring Rwanda, and now control more Congolese territory than ever before. Kigali denies the support of the group.
The M23 fighters began to move on Goma, the capital of the province of North Kivu, and the home of around 1 million people, at the beginning of this week, and sworn to confiscate the city.
The fire of shots and artillery was heard from the city on the city of the city from early Sunday, which led to panic in some areas.
In the afternoon, the rebels approached Goma Airport, said two government soldiers.
“We are at Goma Airport and are waiting for the attackers who are two or three km (1 to 2 miles) from here,” said one of the soldiers to Reuters.
Another Congolese military source that did not want to be named said that the government troops were “festivals”.
Officials at the airport said that flights were no longer in operation. The UN on Sunday asked the employees in Goma not to go to the airport and to remain protected.
Humanitarian crisis
After two consecutive regional wars that come from the genocide of Rwanda, the eastern Congo remains a tinder box of rebel zones and militia.
M23, the well -trained and professionally armed rebel movements in a long series of Tutsi -led rebel movements -states to protect the ethnic Tutsi population of Congo.
According to the government of the Congo, however, the rebels are deputies for Kigalis Expansionist ambitions in the region, an allegations that the Rwandian government has long contested.
The Congo separated all diplomatic relationships with Rwanda in the middle of the rebel offensive this week.
The Army of Congo said on Saturday that Rwandian snipers were responsible for the murder of the military governor of North Kivus on the front.
A government spokesman in Rwanda did not answer a request for a comment.
Aid agencies are concerned about the effects of the conflict on civilians, since the fights will deepen one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Several hundred thousand people had been forced to flee several fighting zones since the latest M23 offensive began with Goma on January 23, the office of the UN Humanitarian coordinator announced in a statement.
“Several locations on the outskirts of Goma, the more than 300,000 displaced shooters, were completely emptied within a few hours,” the explanation said.
The World Food Program forced the escalation in violence, which temporarily pausing emergency operations, announced its executive director on Sunday in a social media post.
(This story was corrected to think about the fact that the Malawi soldiers killed were part of the South African mission, not the UN, in paragraphs 3 and 4)
