(4 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo – 4 February 2024
1. Various of Red Cross workers burying bodies in a mass grave at the ITIG cemetery in Goma
2. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Debors Zuzu, victim’s family member:
"We lost three people: some from a bomb, another was shot. Honestly, we are devastated by what happened in Goma. Our biggest plea is for the leaders to ensure that the war ends because war has no value. We want peace in Goma. If everyone dies, I don’t know who the leaders will govern. We want them to ensure that the city has peace. We have been living with the fear of war for too long."
3. Various of Red Cross workers burying victims of last week’s violence in a mass grave
4. SOUNDBITE (French) Elisha Dunia, father of a victim:
"I am here at the ITIG cemetery. I just saw the conditions in which our Congolese brothers were buried, our children who were shot during the events in Goma. We are heartbroken, and we ask for peace to return to our country, the Congo. We ask the Congolese government, especially the president and our elected deputies from Goma, to get involved in the issue that we are facing here in our city of Goma.”
5. Various of Red Cross workers burying victims of last week’s violence in a mass grave in Goma
6. Red Cross workers take bodies out of a vehicle
7. Red Cross workers walk away from the burial site
8. Red Cross workers and civilians stand by the cemetery
9. Wide view of the ITIG cemetery
STORYLINE:
Red Cross workers in Goma were, Tuesday, continuing to bury victims of last week’s fighting in mass graves – a week after Rwanda-backed rebels claimed control of the city.
Congolese interior minister Jacquemin Shabani claimed Monday that 2,000 bodies had been buried in a mass grave, though the official death toll from the WHO (World Health Organisation) was raised from at least 700 to at least 900 Monday, not counting those who were in the city’s morgues.
Debors Zuzu, who lost three family members in the fighting, said the population was devastated.
“We want peace in Goma. If everyone dies, I don’t know who the leaders will govern. We want them to ensure that the city has peace,” she said. “We have been living with the fear of war for too long."
The M23 rebel group is one of the most powerful of many armed groups vying for power in eastern Congo, which holds vast mineral deposits critical to much of the world’s technology.
They are backed by around 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts, far more than in 2012, when they first captured Goma and held it for days in a conflict driven by ethnic grievances.
The latest fighting forced hundreds of thousands of people who had been displaced by years of conflict to carry what remained of their belongings and flee again.
Thousands poured into nearby Rwanda.
M23 said in a press conference last week that they would be setting up an administration in Goma, and asked the population to return to their daily lives.
On Monday they announced a unilateral ceasefire, starting Tuesday, in the region for humanitarian reasons.
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