More than a week since Goma was seized by the M23 armed group and Rwandan army, residents are still suffering from the brief but devastating battle, while also fearfully looking ahead to what a rebel administration might mean for their lives.
In interviews over the past few days, residents of Goma, the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, described the trauma of facing one of the worst mass casualty events in DRC in years, with nearly 3,000 people killed, according to the UN.
Residents also related feelings of terror as the rebels consolidate control of the city. Journalists and civil society activists said they are in hiding, while other residents said people have felt compelled to attend rebel rallies or even to celebrate the M23’s arrival.
“We live in constant worry, and I consider that my life is at risk,” said a civil society activist, who monitors the security and political situation in Goma*. “If they found us, we would be detained.”
The M23, whose top brass are mostly Congolese Tutsi, began its insurgency more than three years ago after a decade of dormancy, seizing large parts of North Kivu province before finally grabbing Goma, the provincial capital, on 27 January.
The rebels initially justified their revolt – which has displaced over two million people since 2022 – by claiming the DRC government had broken a prior peace deal with the group and by arguing that minority Tutsi communities were facing discrimination.
Rwanda, however, has largely been pulling the strings, supporting the M23 with thousands of troops and advanced arms. It wants political and economic control over North Kivu, which it sees as its backyard and, increasingly, an historical entitlement.
After seizing Goma – home to over two million, and an international aid hub – the M23 announced a unilateral ceasefire. Yet officials have also said they will march to the capital, Kinshasa, and regional states that back rival sides have deployed extra forces.
Many fear the conflict is now sliding into something resembling the horribly destructive wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, when Rwanda-backed rebellions in DRC led to multi-country regional conflicts that cost millions of Congolese lives.
Several Goma residents who spoke to The New Humanitarian said avoiding that outcome requires the government to negotiate with the M23, something it has been unwilling to do so far, fearing it will lose political capital and face humiliation.
“My petition to the government is this: Look at the way the population is suffering; look at the way the population is dying,” said a Goma resident who has been living in the city for the past year. “You must start negotiating.”
Mass graves
The M23 has been in Goma before. It seized the city during a previous insurgency in 2012, also supported by Rwanda. However, that operation triggered huge international pressure, forcing Rwanda to sever ties which resulted in the group’s collapse.
This time around, the rebels had promised (in interviews with The New Humanitarian and others) to stay away from Goma. Yet, on 27 January, bolstered by Rwandan troops, the group marched into the city to the shock of many residents.
With both sides of the conflict using heavy weapons – drones, long-range artillery, and sophisticated assault rifles – the battle displaced hundreds of thousands of people and left morgues dealing with so many corpses they soon ran out of body bags.
Many of the dead are still being laid to rest by exhausted humanitarian workers in mass graves, while residents who spoke to The New Humanitarian said they remain traumatised by what they witnessed.
“Since I was born, I have never heard gunfire and fighting with intensity like this,” said the Goma resident who moved there last year. “To see people die right in front of you… and you are right there. I have never experienced war like this.”
A resident whose brother works for the Red Cross said aid workers have been bringing hundreds of corpses to local morgues in recent days and described one of the city’s main hospitals being overwhelmed with dead bodies.
They said they had personally witnessed M23 and Rwandan forces killing and disarming Congolese soldiers and allied local militias that are known as Wazalendo (patriots, in Kiswahili) during the takeover.
“I watched them with my own eyes as they entered the city and purged the entire town [of government forces],” he said. “Everyone who they saw with weapons, they would eliminate or command them to drop their weapons and put their hands in the air.”
A 67-year-old resident of Goma’s Birere neighbourhood recalled laying on the floor of her house shaking as her area sustained heavy bombardment, she presumes from M23 and Rwandan soldiers.
The woman said that when she finally left her house she found multiple injured neighbours including one with broken legs and a missing hand. She was so shocked she went back inside and laid down again on the floor.
“My heart was pounding as if it would burst out of my chest,” she told The New Humanitarian, explaining that she thought she was going to be killed. “People were dying, people were being eliminated.”
Crowded hospitals
Though the fighting has now stopped, the UN and international aid groups say they are struggling to bring in lifesaving humanitarian cargo because of the closure of Goma’s main airport.
Aid groups and medical workers said the situation is especially critical in overcrowded hospitals, which don’t have sufficient equipment or medicine to treat patients, many of whom require surgery for major shrapnel and gunshot wounds.
The director of one hospital visited by The New Humanitarian said his teams have treated more than 70 injured people and dealt with 66 corpses since last week. The director said medical staff were themselves trapped by the fighting while working inside the hospital and that bombs struck three places within the clinic, including a neonatal ward.
“The displaced people are suffering terribly. The support that they had been receiving has been cut off completely. Now they are all afraid, they don’t know where they should go or what they can do.”
In one of the hospital’s wards, a 28-year-old woman said a bomb had exploded in her home in Birere, killing her landlord and badly injuring several others, including her young child.
The woman said the explosion damaged her legs, leaving her unable to walk. She said she didn’t know what the situation was in Goma because she had been stuck in the clinic. “But from what I hear from others, it seems we can expect more peril,” she added.
Beyond the medical needs, several residents said they are struggling with soaring prices for basic foods – some of which have doubled or tripled – having also struggled with electricity and water outages since last week.
Residents said they were also concerned for the up to one million displaced people who have been living in camps in Goma after escaping M23 and Rwandan army offensives in more rural parts of North Kivu over the past three years.
“The displaced people are suffering terribly,” said the civil society activist. “The support that they had been receiving has been cut off completely. Now they are all afraid, they don’t know where they should go or what they can do.”
Some of the camps were reportedly bombed or abandoned during the fighting, and UN experts have accused the rebels of forcibly closing other sites in violation of displaced peoples’ rights.
A journalist in Goma who has reported on the M23 conflict for national television said he had also heard that the rebels did not want displaced people in the city and were requesting that they return home.
“Those people who came from [rebel controlled] Minova, Rutshuru, Masisi, the M23 has said that they all need to return to the places they have fled from,” the journalist said. “They are sending all the displaced people away.”
Activists in hiding
Other M23 actions have instilled fear in residents, even among a population that is used to dealing with an abusive security apparatus and a predatory government that had installed an unpopular form of martial law across North Kivu in recent years.
Despite describing their push on Goma as an effort to “liberate” the city, the rebels have been accused by the UN of looting private homes, seizing vehicles (including those owned by aid groups), and conducting house searches.
The local journalist said he has stopped working altogether and fears he will be “hunted down and punished” because he condemned the M23 in previous reporting during the conflict.
“I can’t report the truth, I can’t write anything, and I can’t record anything because I feel it would be too dangerous,” the journalist said, explaining that he intends to leave the country when the opportunity arises.
“Civil society is also terrified, and they are in hiding,” he added. “When the enemy arrived, we realised that we were all in the same situation. We had been so bitterly condemning the M23.”
Videos shared on social media when the M23 reached Goma showed some residents appearing to welcome them. Media reports, however, suggest participants were told to show up by the rebels, while others said people were just trying to protect themselves.
“People gathered to cheer for them when they arrived so that they wouldn’t shoot them… but this was a performance,” one Goma resident said of what happened. “Inside, the community was not celebrating.”
Several other residents also told The New Humanitarian they felt compelled to attend the M23’s first mass rally, held on 6 February, after hearing messages suggesting that those who didn’t show up would be regarded as enemies.
The civil society activist encouraged people to accept Goma’s “shifting reality” for their own security and to try and live alongside the rebels, however difficult their situation becomes.
“We have a saying: ‘If a woman gives birth and the father dies, the child will accept any man who comes to live with his mother,’” he said. “For now, we must accept these people like our father, even if our hearts and theirs are not aligned.”
What next?
What happens next in the conflict is uncertain. Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame are set to attend a peace mediation in Tanzania today and tomorrow, though the rhetoric is currently bellicose on all sides.
The M23 has taken on an increasingly national agenda, threatening to march on the capital, while Tshisekedi has vowed to reclaim Goma. Rwanda is showing no signs of ending its support to the rebels, even as criticism of its actions mounts.
Residents in Goma offered differing views on what they would like their government, regional states, and the wider international community to do next, even if all of them agreed that they want to see an end to the fighting.
“The solution is not to continue fighting these people. We need a diplomatic solution, not more war.”
The journalist said countries that financially and diplomatically support Rwanda – that includes regional powers and several western donors – should sever their ties with the country until it stops backing the M23.
“It destroys me to know that there are countries which are supporting our enemies and holding their hand,” the journalist said. “I thought that our president was traveling to perform diplomacy, but some countries are not on his side.”
The Goma resident who witnessed Rwandan and M23 troops killing pro-government forces said he wants people in the city to continue supporting the army “so that they can end this insecurity”.
However, several others called for the opposite, arguing that any attempt by the Congolese army and its allies to recapture Goma could trigger a new round of devastating fighting.
“The solution is not to continue fighting these people,” said a resident who described feeling like a prisoner even as fighting has ended. “They are already in the city. When you fight them in the city, you kill us. We need a diplomatic solution, not more war.”
“It is terror and panic to live like this constantly,” added the injured woman at the hospital visited by The New Humanitarian. “To the government, all we want is for them to bring us peace. I don’t have any means to flee if things get worse.”
Edited by Robert Flummerfelt and Philip Kleinfeld.
*Sources in this story are not being named due to concerns about their security.
