At least nine people were killed on Friday (May 3) in a bombing that hit a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where fighting pits government forces against M23 rebels (March 23 Movement), local sources said.
“I saw nine bodies that were in front of me,” including several children, Dédesi Mitima, head of the Lac Vert district, west of the capital of the North Kivu province, told AFP, another official reporting a provisional toll of ten deaths.
According to testimonies, still confused in the middle of the day, "bombs" fell in the morning on displaced people's huts on both sides of the road leading from Goma to Sake, a city considered a strategic lock, at around twenty kilometers from the provincial capital.
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 seized large swaths of territory in North Kivu, going so far as to almost entirely encircle Goma. The city has more than 1 million inhabitants and nearly 1 million displaced people.
The origin of Friday's bombings is not clearly established, but government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya accused on the social network X "the Rwandan army and its M23 terrorist proxies" of being responsible.
