Useful information
Prime News delivers timely, accurate news and insights on global events, politics, business, and technology
The governor of the province of Kivu Norte, in the east of the Congo, died from the wounds suffered during the fighting on the front, authorities said on Friday, while the M23 rebels approached the provincial capital.
The M23 made significant territorial advances in recent weeks, surrounding rubber, which has about two million inhabitants and is a regional center for humanitarian and security efforts.
The circumstances that surrounded the death of Major General Peter Cirimwami were not clear, but Cirimwami, who directed the army’s operations in the agitated Kivu of the North, visited the troops in the front line in Kasengzi, about 13 kilometers of rubber, The day of his death.
His death on Thursday was confirmed by a government source, a military source and a UN source on Friday, who spoke about anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter publicly. The governor died in a hospital after suffering wounds on the front, they said.
On Thursday, panic spread in rubber when the rebels took control of Sake, a city just 27 kilometers from the provincial capital and one of the last main routes towards the city still under government control, according to the UN Chief .
The M23 is one of the around 100 armed groups that have been competing for a support point in the east of the Congo, rich in minerals, along the border with Rwanda, in a decades of decades that one of the greater humanitarian crises in the world. More than seven million people have been displaced by fighting.
Earlier this month, the M23 captured the cities of Minova, Katale and Masisi, west of rubber.
The M23 seized rubber in 2012 and controlled it for more than a week.
The Congo, the United States and UN experts accuse Rwanda of supporting the M23, which is mainly composed of ethnic Tutsis members who separated from the Congolese army more than a decade ago.
The Rwanda government denies the statement, but last year he admitted that he has troops and missile systems in the east of the Congo to safeguard his safety, pointing out an accumulation of Congolese forces near the border. UN experts estimate that there are up to 4,000 Rwandan forces in the Congo.
Tension, confrontations
The rubber city was dominated by a palpable tension while the clashes between the Armed Forces of the Congo and the M23 developed on the periphery of the city on Friday.
The fighting is concentrated in Kibumba, about 25 kilometers north of rubber, and around Sake, to the west. More than 178,000 people have fled the progress of the M23 in the last two weeks.
Alliance Gentil, 25, was among dozens of people displaced on the Sake to rubber road on Friday. Sitting in her water bowl next to her belongings, with a baby on her back, she said she is tired of fleeing constantly.
“I am fleeing, but I don’t know where I go,” said the mother of two children, adding that she already fled twice in the last month.
The Front of the Front near rubber is only a few tens of meters from the displaced fields of Lushagala and Bulengo, which feeds fear among those who seek security near the provincial capital.
Tens of thousands more arrived in recent weeks to the rubber fields and their periphery, which already housed almost 600,000 displaced people, according to the UN agency for refugees.
Heavy weapons explosions resonated in every rubber on Friday. Many stores and shops remained closed and the police were deployed in the main streets of the city. Military control posts were established throughout the city, controlling all vehicles.
