Local NGOs warn of a new humanitarian catastrophe in North Kivu (DRC) due to the latest advances of the M23

MADRID Jan. 6 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Local humanitarian organizations warn that the new advance of the March 23 Movement militias in the Congolese province of North Kivu has generated a new humanitarian catastrophe with another wave of massive displacements to the provincial capital, Goma, absolutely overloaded with arrivals.

“Around Goma there are already more than 30 camps, some of them without access to drinking water, food or medical care,” Johnson Ishara, coordinator of the NGO Conscious Dynamic Generation, told the United Nations radio station in the African country, Radio Okapi.

The Displacement Matrix of the United Nations International Organization for Migration details that in Goma there are currently almost two million internally displaced people identified – Ishara speaks of figures close to five million – only due to the M23 offensive.

The March 23 Movement is an armed organization that claims to defend the interests of the Congolese Tutsi minority, but the Congolese Government assures that the armed group is actually the armed wing of the Rwandan authorities to destabilize the country, an accusation that Rwanda has consistently rejected. .

For a few weeks now, the M23 has resumed a large-scale offensive in the province, specifically in the territory of Masisi, until finally taking control of its main city, Masisi-center, on Saturday afternoon.

“Everyone is trying to escape the fighting and they are arriving without help or shelter. The overflow of people is immeasurable,” he warned.

For the aid worker, the situation in North Kivu “is a serious humanitarian scandal” and he has asked the Congolese Government to declare a state of humanitarian emergency now. “The east of the country is turning into an endless war,” he warned.