Sisters Grace and Zaumeni were taking care of their two-month-old younger sister, Nerlin, when the rebels came.

Their mother had gone to the market that morning and told them to take care of Nerlin.

When they heard gunfire and screams outside, they grabbed her and fled into the woods.

The British newspaper "The Times" reported the story of the two sisters, Grace and Zaumini, in a report, amid the armed ethnic struggle for power between the Tutsis and Hutus in eastern Democratic Congo, who moved from Rwanda, where the famous genocide took place in the 1990s.

Tutsi and Hutu again

Tutsi fighters of the rebel "March 23 Movement" (M23) - supported by Rwanda against the Congolese government - entered Kishanga, the birthplace of the two girls.

The Times described this conflict, which is unfolding in the world's oblivion, as almost unimaginably brutal, adding that analysts feared that French President Emmanuel Macron's attempts on Saturday to organize a ceasefire, the fourth since September, would have little chance of success.

The newspaper continued what happened to the two girls, saying that while they were running, they tried to hide among the trees with their neighbors (4 other women and 7 men), but the rebels found them and dragged them into the bushes, then got drunk and raped the women.

For two days, the rebels held the women and men as slaves, forced them to cook and clean, and continued to rape the women.

Then they announced that they would kill the hostages one by one.

A map showing the borders between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and the city of Goma (the island)

"Kill me and leave my sisters"

Zaumeni, 23, who was 3 years older than Grace, begged the rebels not to kill her two younger sisters.

"If you're going to kill, just kill me," she said, "and let them go."

The rebels dragged Zaomeni out into the open and raped her again, then hacked her to death with machetes.

"She was in front of my eyes, the last thing she told me was to be strong and take care of the baby," Grace told the newspaper in a camp for the displaced outside Goma city.

Over a 3-week period last month in the camp itself, more than 100 cases of rape were recorded, reported by women ranging in age from their teens to their 60s.

For power and wealth

The rebels claim to be protecting Congolese Tutsis from persecution in Congo, where hundreds of thousands of Hutu combatants and civilians fled after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

But the Congolese say this is a pretext by Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who is a Tutsi, to use his proxies in the "March 23 Movement" and his armed forces to extend his control over the resource-rich eastern Congo.

The "M23 Movement" rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (French)

After her sister was raped and killed, the Times report continues, Grace saw something so horrible she could barely tell: The fighters took one of her neighbours, a pregnant woman, and dragged her outside in full view of others, then cut open her stomach and killed her and her unborn child.

That night, when the rebels are drunk and asleep, Grace grabs Nerlyn and runs into the woods.

"I was holding her mouth so she couldn't cry," she said.

In the morning, Grace walked until she found a main road and walked to the makeshift displacement camp near Goma.

ritual humiliation and punishment

The report indicates that both the "March 23 Movement" and allied forces committed reprehensible acts against civilians, apparently intended as humiliation and punishment with a traditional ritual motive.

He stated that the "M23 movement" is currently only about 32 kilometers from Goma, to which hundreds flee every day from the countryside, many of them carrying only their children.

The most fortunate carry a plastic sheet with them to protect them from the rain, while others sleep on the muddy ground.

In the camp they call Kanyaruchenya camp, thousands live in a sea of ​​human excrement, and children struggle with raspy coughs and mucus flowing from their mouths.

Aid groups say cholera is ravaging the population, food is expensive, and many are living on the brink of starvation.