The more than 5,000 remaining residents of the Congolese town of Kitshanga, in North Kivu province in the northeast of the country, have barricaded themselves in their homes and called for urgent help from the government to drive out the March 23 Movement (M23) rebels who seized control of the town on Friday.
Residents confirmed to Radio Okapi that Kitshanga is now a «ghost town» where schools, markets, stores, businesses and local community radio stations are closed.
The same sources confirmed that 90 percent of the town’s population, some 56,000 inhabitants in total, fled the town in the previous hours in the direction of Mwesso and another hundred managed to find refuge in a nearby base of the United Nations mission in the African country. MONUSCO raised the number of refugees in its facilities to 450 on Friday.
The rebels have camouflaged themselves among the population while the activity of the six medical centers has been suspended and all their personnel «have fled», according to these sources. The guerrillas, now in civilian clothes, are looking for city officials to force them to resume their activities.
The Congolese authorities, who have denounced that the M23 did not proceed to complete its withdrawal on the dates fixed at the mini-summit in Luanda — in which the presidents of DRC and Rwanda, Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame, respectively, participated — and launched operations in the zone, have not pronounced themselves for the moment on the situation in Kitshanga.
For its part, MONUSCO condemned on Thursday «the military offensive of the M23 in the territory of Masisi» and put the number of displaced persons who have taken refuge in its base in Kitshanga at 450 people, «including women and children».
«Our ‘blue helmets’, who are physically protecting them, have also given immediate assistance in the form of tents, food, water and first aid,» he said on his account on the social network Twitter, where he called on the rebels to «cease all hostilities and withdraw from the occupied areas, in line with the ‘road map’ set out in the final communiqué of the Luanda mini-summit.»
The rebel group on Thursday accused the DRC of «creating» chaos through the «externalization of the conflict» and has reiterated its allegations about the use of «mercenaries» by Kinshasa, while accusing MONUSCO of being the «pillar» of government forces and their allied militias.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
