Congolese cope with rebel violence

BENI, CONGO>> Kavira Mathe was making dinner for her two sons when bullets began flying. Eastern Congo’s M23 rebels had attacked her village, killing scores of civilians. She and others fled for their lives, she said.

“I lost several friends,” said Mathe speaking to The Associated Press by phone from Kanyabayonga where she now shelters. Trekking some 30 miles to safety, she saw roads littered with bodies that appeared to have been bound and shot, she said.

“It was really horrible to see,” Mathe said. “We are tired of this war.”

Communities in eastern Congo are struggling to survive in the wake of that massacre and others in which at least 130 people were killed by M23 rebels in what the United Nations called “unspeakable violence” against civilians.

Nearly 26,000 people have been displaced since the attacks at the end of November, according to the U.N. refugee agency, adding to hundreds of thousands who have been uprooted since fighting began between M23 and a coalition of armed civilian protection militia more than a year ago.

The Associated Press spoke with four people who f led the attacks in North Kivu province. They said M23 shot people indiscriminately, raided shops and chased them from their homes so that people had to hike to safety for hours over rugged terrain and through rivers, without food or water. Many now live in squalid conditions, cramped into small rooms with no money or access to fields for farming.

The M23 rebel group, largely comprised of Congolese ethnic Tutsis, rose to prominence 10 years ago when its fighters seized Goma, eastern Congo’s largest city on the border with Rwanda. It derives its name from a March 23, 2009, peace deal, which it accuses the Congo government of not implementing. The rebel group was dormant for nearly a decade before resurfacing late last year.

Since October, M23 violence has surged and the rebels have seized more territory including Rutshuru Center and Kiwanja and destroyed a newly established site for displaced Congolese who had recently returned from Uganda.

“This situation has directly put thousands of families in very poor living conditions. In the makeshift camps where they live, there is no food, no shelter, no drinking water, no primary health care. In short, the families are in unprecedented suffering,” said Francois Kamate, press officer for LUCHA, a local rights group.

Aid organizations are struggling to cope with the soaring needs. Water is extremely limited in the areas surrounding Goma, contributing to an outbreak of cholera.