A bombing attributed to rebels of the March 23 Movement (M23) left seven dead on Tuesday, May 7, in a locality in South Kivu, a province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which now appears to be affected by this rebellion which has been going on for two years in neighboring North Kivu, local sources announced on Wednesday. At the same time, according to other sources, fighting took place in the Sake sector, a town located about twenty kilometers west of Goma, in the territory of Masisi, and considered as a strategic lock on the road to the capital of North Kivu.
“A bomb dropped by rebels coming from Masisi territory fell in the village of Kisongati, in Kalehe territory,” in South Kivu, said Archimed Karhebwa, deputy administrator of this entity. The explosion of the device left “seven dead and six injured,” he added. A local civil society official confirmed this toll, specifying that the dead were three men, three women and a child.
“The psychosis is taking hold of the inhabitants,” commented Mr. Karhebwa, specifying that “another bomb fell last week” not far from there, in Minova, a town in South Kivu where thousands of displaced people chased away these days gathered. recent months by the fighting in Masisi. “We are in a state of alert”, but “we invite the population to calm down, the situation is under control of the army, there are no M23 rebel troops reported in the territory of Kalehe”, continued l deputy territorial administrator.
Supported by units of the Rwandan army, the M23 rebels took up arms again at the end of 2021 after several years of dormancy and conquered large swaths of territory, going so far as to almost entirely encircle Goma. On Friday, the bombing of a camp for displaced people on the western outskirts of Goma, on the Sake road, left around ten people dead. Fighting intensified at the beginning of February around Sake, and the rebellion has since seized new localities in Masisi territory. The M23 took control last week of the mining town of Rubaya, from which coltan, a strategic mineral for the electronics industry, is extracted.