The President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Felix Tshisekedi, cut short his trip to Davos, Switzerland, as the conflict in the east of the country escalated this week.

Tshisekedi was in Davos attending the World Economic Forum.

Fighting in the eastern DRC has escalated since the beginning of the year with 400,000 people estimated to have fled their homes in this month alone. This comes as the M23 rebel group advances on a major town, Goma. Goma has a population of more than one million people.

In the past few weeks the M23 group has also captured a number of other towns in the region.

The BBC quoted a local official from Goma, Bahala Shamavu Innocent, as saying: “The town of Goma is held in a vice, the town is suffocated, there are no more entrances, there are no more exits… this population is suffering enormously.”

M23 is allegedly backed by Rwanda, a claim which Kigali denies.

South African troops are also in the region, as part of a Southern African Development Community peacekeeping force.

[Image: Flickr: M23 troops Bunagana 4, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23855937]


author