HARARE, January 30. /TASS/. More than a thousand people were admitted to hospitals in the city of Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid battles between the republic’s armed forces and members of the Rwandan-backed M23 movement on January 23-28, the Actualit· news portal reported.
The majority of the wounded are civilians, suffering from gunshot and fragmentation wounds, the portal wrote with reference to Bruno Lemarquis, the Deputy Special Representative to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), Resident Coordinator and Coordinator of Humanitarian Operations in DR Congo.
The UN official said local hospitals are filled beyond capacity, and assistance provided by Doctors Without Borders, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) is not enough to alleviate the situation.
According to Lemarquis, hospitals are experiencing lack of medicines, equipment and personnel, which "raises the risk of human casualties." Hospitals in Goma, underfunded and understaffed, are unable to cope with the flow of the wounded. Shortages of antibiotics, donor blood and disposable medical and surgical equipment have also been reported.
On top of that, the city’s power and water supply systems have collapsed, and residents have to drink untreated water from natural sources. This raises the risk of a cholera outbreak.
To make matters worse, city morgues are filled beyond capacity, and dead bodies are lying in the streets.
The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been smoldering for decades. After the Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, and the defeat in the civil war in 1993, part of the Rwandan government army, mostly the Hutu, retreated to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they came into conflict with the local Tutsi, the Banyamulenge. After the Tutsi came to power in Rwanda, it came in support for the Banyamulenge. Eventually, the Banyamulenge were joined by Congolese separatists and deserters from the Congolese army to form the M23 group in 2012. Rebel groups, composed primarily of the Tutsi, plunged into hostilities in the east of the DRC in January 2021 and by now they have seized several cities and more than 100 villages in the North Kivu province.