BBC News, Goma<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Heshima winces in pain as he tries to shift his weight, sweat beading on his face. The slight 13-year-old sits on a bed in a tent in the grounds of an overcrowded hospital in Goma city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n Heshima’s left leg is a bandaged stump, his stomach is streaked with burn marks, and both of his parents have been killed.<\/p>\n A relative, Tantine, tells us who is to blame: M23 rebels – backed by Rwanda and battling the Congolese army, known as the FARDC. The rebels now control the two largest cities in this mineral-rich area, which borders Rwanda.<\/p>\n “It was a Sunday,” she says. “There was fighting between them and the FARDC. They dropped the bomb, and I lost six members of my family.”<\/p>\n The M23 portray themselves as freedom fighters, bringing peace and order to a failed state, and a failed leader in Congolese President F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi.<\/p>\n The rebel group, mainly comprised of ethnic Tutsis, has been on the march since early 2022, seizing swathes of territory – with the help of up to 4,000 Rwandan troops.<\/p>\n That is according to UN experts who say Rwanda has “de facto control” over the group – claims Kigali and Rwandan President Paul Kagame deny.<\/p>\n The price of the M23’s gains can be counted at Ndosho Hospital, where Heshima is being treated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Doctors are struggling to clear a backlog of civilians and soldiers wounded at the end of January, when the rebels took Goma. The M23 say they “liberated” the city.<\/p>\n The death toll in the fighting was close to 3,000 people, according to a UN estimate.<\/p>\n Four operating rooms are in use – simultaneously – throughout the day and sometimes at night.<\/p>\n “It’s been a terrible situation for the doctors,” says Myriam Favier of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which supports the hospital.<\/p>\n The medics have been sleeping in the operating theatres, she says.<\/p>\n “Our medical supplies were looted at the very beginning of the escalation of the conflict. And we had an influx that was unseen before – between 100 and 150 patients a day for weeks.”<\/p>\n That is now down to about 10 admissions per day, according to Ms Favier, and “right now people are just trying to live again”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Drive around Goma and the streets hum with motorbikes. Many shops are open, and pavement sellers are back with their piles of onions and avocados and tomatoes.<\/p>\n There is little sign of well-armed M23 fighters. They do not stand on street corners. They don’t need to. Everyone knows they are in charge.<\/p>\n One local journalist said many in the media are “self- censoring” what they report, waiting to gauge how the new rulers will behave.<\/p>\n One activist told me many were “living in a big silence” because of fear of reprisals by the rebels.<\/p>\n “This is the most worrying period of Goma’s history,” he said. “I am afraid, the future is very uncertain.”<\/p>\n Not according to the M23.<\/p>\n “Expect peace, security, development, job creation\u2026 a future with zero refugees, zero corruption, zero hunger,” Willy Manzi, a newly appointed M23 vice governor who has recently returned from Canada, posted on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n But a different message was delivered to tens of thousands of people who have sought refuge from fighting in recent years in a network of camps in Goma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n They were given 72 hours to go. The M23 want the camps erased, along with any rival armed groups hiding in them.<\/p>\n “They came and told us, ‘You have three days to leave,'” says Divine, 19, who has one child on her hip, and another at her feet.<\/p>\n “We were very scared because we have nowhere to go. Our houses have been destroyed. Hunger is killing us here, but how we can go home to nothing?”<\/p>\n As she speaks a crowd gathers around us. There are silent nods and worried faces.<\/p>\n “They were our enemies and now they are our neighbours,” says one man, who asks not to be named.<\/p>\n Home for Divine is Bulengo camp – an expanse of scrappy white tents, perched on dark volcanic rock, surrounded by green hills.<\/p>\n Many of the shelters are little more than scraps of tarpaulin. But the camp was something to cling to – until the M23 ultimatum.<\/p>\n When we visited many were already packing up, salvaging bits of wood and plastic, and rolling up bedding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After ordering people out the camps the M23 later said they were “encouraging voluntary returns”.<\/p>\n It does not feel voluntary to many of the displaced.<\/p>\n Human rights groups say it fits a pattern of abuses by the rebels who they accuse of indiscriminate shelling, gang rape and summary executions.<\/p>\n They level the same accusations at the Congolese army and their allies.<\/p>\n The decades long conflict has its roots – in part – in the Rwanda genocide of 1994, when around 800,000 people, mostly Tutis, were killed by Hutu extremists.<\/p>\n Afterwards many Hutus fled into DR Congo, including some involved the genocide. Rwanda says they remain a threat.<\/p>\n Critics say Kigali has its eye on DR Congo’s vast mineral wealth, crucial for much of the world’s technology including laptops and mobile phones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are growing fears that the scramble for control of these riches could trigger a new regional war, with implications far beyond Africa.<\/p>\n Either way – if history is any guide – the treasures beneath the soil are unlikely to benefit the people here.<\/p>\n Back at Bulengo camp we met Alphonsine, who was leaving with her extended family, bent double with the weight of belongings tied to her back.<\/p>\n She said it would be a two day walk to reach her area, and there was nothing to go back to. Her home had been destroyed.<\/p>\n “How will you survive?” I asked.<\/p>\n “I came from suffering,” she said, “and I leave in suffering.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Additional reporting from the BBC’s Wietske Burema and G\u00f6ktay Koraltan.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"G\u00f6ktay](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/5fa6\/live\/fbfa6d90-ee12-11ef-a319-fb4e7360c4ec.jpg.webp\")
G\u00f6ktay Koraltan \/ BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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G\u00f6ktay Koraltan \/ BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"G\u00f6ktay](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/c1c2\/live\/9a871420-edfc-11ef-a319-fb4e7360c4ec.jpg.webp\")
G\u00f6ktay Koraltan \/ BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"G\u00f6ktay](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/f1c4\/live\/b3ee38d0-edfc-11ef-a319-fb4e7360c4ec.jpg.webp\")
G\u00f6ktay Koraltan \/ BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"G\u00f6ktay](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/689c\/live\/bce0b800-edfc-11ef-bd1b-d536627785f2.jpg.webp\")
G\u00f6ktay Koraltan \/ BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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