Loud explosions heard. The airport of Goma, capital of North Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was hit on Saturday around 2 a.m. (00 a.m. GMT) by at least one "bomb", against a backdrop of fighting in the region against the M23 rebellion supported by Rwanda.
No indication of the damage caused by the device or its origin could be immediately provided by the sources reporting the attack.
“Yes, it’s true, Goma airport was hit by a bomb last night,” a source in the provincial governorate told AFP, without wanting to be cited more precisely.
A security source, also on condition of anonymity, spoke of "two bombs" having hit the airport, but which "did not cause any damage" according to her.
“Experts are on the scene to verify the origin of the shots,” she said. During the night, residents, including an AFP correspondent, heard two loud bangs.
Goma isolated from the rest of the country
Since the end of 2021, North Kivu has been gripped by a conflict which pits the M23 ("March 23 Movement"), supported by units of the Rwandan army, against the Congolese army, associated in particular with armed groups known as "patriots" and two foreign private military companies.
Several thousand soldiers and militiamen are engaged, as well as artillery, Sukhoi-25 fighter planes and drones.
The M23 is a predominantly Tutsi rebellion which took up arms again at the end of 2021 after several years of dormancy and has since seized large swaths of the territory of North Kivu.
Also read: What are the main armed groups active in eastern DR Congo?
Its capital Goma, an agglomeration of more than a million inhabitants, wedged between Lake Kivu to the south and the Rwandan border to the east, is currently practically cut off from all its land access routes to the interior of the country. country, to the north and to the west.
The DR Congo accuses Rwanda and its M23 “adjuncts” of wanting to take control of the minerals of eastern Congo. The M23, for its part, claims to be defending a threatened segment of the population and is demanding negotiations, which Kinshasa refuses, excluding discussions with "terrorists".
Fears of an explosion of violence
About ten days ago, fighting intensified at Sake, a strategic town in Masisi territory located about twenty kilometers west of Goma.
No official figures have been given, but according to various sources, there have been dozens of civilian and military deaths and injuries.
On Thursday, the South African army announced that two of its men, integrated into a southern African regional force which has just deployed in the region, had been killed and three others injured.
Diplomatic initiatives launched to resolve the crisis have so far yielded nothing.
A mini-summit on the situation in eastern DR Congo, bringing together several African heads of state, was held Friday evening in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the sidelines of the African Union summit.
DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi was largely re-elected for a second term on December 20, after a campaign in which he threatened to declare war on Kigali and compared the Rwandan president to Adolf Hitler and his " expansionist aims.
With AFP
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