GENEVA: The UN on Tuesday said the humanitarian situation in the besieged DR Congo city of Goma was “extremely worrying” amid mass displacement, food shortages, looted aid, overflowing hospitals and widespread sexual violence.
Aid agencies warned that attacks on water and electricity infrastructure could fuel deadly infectious diseases like cholera, adding that fighting around a local laboratory could allow pathogens like Ebola to escape and spread.
“The humanitarian situation in and around Goma remains extremely worrying,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
He said UN colleagues were reporting “heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city, and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets”.
The main city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has become a battleground since fighters from the Tutsi-led M23 armed group and Rwandan forces entered central Goma on Sunday night after a weeks-long advance through the region.
The lightning offensive marks a major escalation in the vast central African country’s mineral-rich east, which has been by plagued by fighting between armed groups backed by regional rivals since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
It has also triggered a spiralling humanitarian crisis, forcing half a million people from their homes since the start of the year, UN figures show.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.