Violence raging in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has killed “more than 7,000 compatriots”, many of them civilians, since last month, the Congolese premier said Monday.
The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has seized large swathes of the mineral-rich eastern DRC – including the main cities of Goma and Bukavu – in the face of limited resistance from Congolese forces.
“The security situation in eastern DRC has reached alarming levels,” Prime Minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, stressing that since January, “the deaths of more than 7,000 compatriots” had been registered.
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They include “more than 2,500 bodies buried without being identified”, she said, adding that another 1,500 bodies were still in the morgue.
Asked at a press briefing on the sidelines of the council whether the dead were civilians or soldiers, she said that “for the moment… we have not yet been able to identify all of these people”.
But, she stressed, “there is a significant mass of civilians who are part of these dead”.
The M23 movement, supported by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, according to UN experts, now controls large tracts of eastern DRC, a troubled region rich in natural resources.
Its rapid advance has sent thousands fleeing.
Fighters took control of the South Kivu provincial capital Bukavu just over a week ago, after first capturing Goma, the capital of North Kivu and the main city in the country’s east, last month.
The premier said that more than 3,000 people had been killed in Goma alone.
UN chief Antonio Guterres told the Human Rights Council that the situation in the DRC was “a deadly whirlwind of violence and horrifying human rights abuses”.
“The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DRC must be respected,” he said.
“As more cities fall, the risk of a regional war rises. It’s time to silence the guns.”
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