M23 rebels ‘execute' children in assault on major DRC city
The Rwanda-backed group captured the eastern city over the weekend, leaving bodies in the streets and looting as they went, sources on the ground told The Telegraph, warning of an escalating humanitarian crisis.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN's human rights office (UNHCR), said the three boys were killed in Bukavu's Latin Quarter after refusing to put down guns they had collected from an abandoned army camp.
'Our office has confirmed cases of summary execution of children by M23 after they entered the city of Bukavu last week. We are also aware that children were in possession of weapons,' she said.
According to the UN agency, the three boys, aged 11 to 15, were found wearing discarded combat uniforms.
The assault on Bukavu, a critical trade hub with a population of 1.3 million, comes two weeks after the rebels seized the major city of Goma in a four-day siege that left at least 3,000 people dead and displaced 350,000 others.
The intensification in the fighting has created a fresh crisis for the country's overwhelmed network of displacement camps and health facilities, at a time when it is already dealing with major infectious disease outbreaks including a more aggressive strain of mpox known as Clade 1b, as well as malaria, measles, and cholera.
The first M23 troops entered the city on Friday, creating an atmosphere of 'unimaginable terror and fear,' said Marcus Bachmann, head of programmes for South Kivu at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Thousands of residents fled in anticipation of the rebel assault, among them critical healthcare workers.
The health system is now 'dysfunctional' because of a lack of staff, said Mr Bachmann, harming efforts to contain the infectious diseases already plaguing the eastern DRC.
M23 reportedly faced little resistance from the Congolese army, which had been ordered to retreat days earlier to avoid another bloody urban battle like the one seen in Goma.
Although no major armed confrontations occurred between the army and M23, MSF reported 'widespread looting and shootings'.
On Saturday, civilians looted abandoned army warehouses, resulting in the 'enormous proliferation of weapons' in the city, said MSF's Mr Bachmann.
'There were enormous shootings in town all over Saturday, and those partially were minors who got hold of weapons and started to use them in the city. There were also clashes with retreating [Congolese army] combatants,' said Mr Bachmann.
Both the UN and several NGOs have also accused both the M23 and the FARDC of recruiting child soldiers.
Volunteers from the Congolese Red Cross said they recovered more than 20 bodies from the streets of Bukavu.
Four MSF-supported hospitals have been treating war casualties in the city, with injuries split roughly 50/50 between gunshot wounds and shrapnel, according to Mr Bachmann. So far, they have treated 58 civilians, including 11 children and 26 women.
A World Food Programme depot in Bukavu holding 6,800 metric tons of food was also looted on Saturday. The agency had already suspended its activities for weeks due to the deteriorating security situation.
Separately, more than 1,500 prisoners escaped from Kabare and Bukavu central prisons in a mass jailbreak on Friday as the first of the rebels entered the city.
The UN reported receiving protection requests from victims and witnesses who fear retaliation from the escapees, some of whom had been involved in high-profile trials for serious crimes.
Several of the prisoners were convicted of grave violations and abuses, including international crimes, the UNHCR said.
Meanwhile, Goma has continued to suffer the after-effects of the devastating siege last month.
Ndosho hospital, the best-equipped in the city, has been forced to convert the facility's car park and canteen into triage centers to treat the 1,500 people who have been admitted since January, Eleanor Asomani, a spokesperson for the International Red Cross, told The Telegraph.
'We've had to organise the car park as a triage zone and then do colour-coding depending on the injuries,' she said.
The fighting in Goma has forced more than 100 patients in isolation with mpox centers to flee and re-enter the general population, sparking fears that transmission will be reignited in the area.
The M23 offensive in the Eastern DRC began in December, with the rebels vowing to march towards Kinshasa, the capital, over 1,600 miles away.
Led by Tutsis, the same ethnic group targeted during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the rebels claim they are fighting to protect the ethnic minority in the DRC.
However, both the Congolese government and the United Nations accuse the rebels, along with the Rwandan government, of exploiting the conflict to plunder trillions of dollars of the DRC's mineral resources like gold and coltan that are critical to global electronics production.
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