LAC VERT, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Widow Francine Nsengiyumva and her three children have little to eat and sleep on the hard ground, but like many others at a makeshift displacement centre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo she is scared to return home.
On Sunday, she and other women and children gathered outside at the centre, a school in the Lac Vert district of Goma, the city seized by M23 rebels last week in the worst escalation of fighting in the region in more than a decade.
The insurgents want to show they can restore order and have urged civilians to return to normal life, but 23-year-old Nsengiyumva said it would not be safe to go back to her village of Nzulo, near Goma.
“Those who took our land are still there, still killing people and terrorising,” she said, cooking a pot of beans over an open fire.
“We will only return when there is peace.”
The group is among the hundreds of thousands more people displaced by the surge in hostilities since the start of the year. Many, like Floride Furaha, have had to flee multiple times.
She and other women at the centre discussed the scourge of sexual violence that has risen sharply during the conflict, particularly in their province of North Kivu, aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned last September.
“This is why we fled,” Furaha said. “Many of us have been raped. They enter the houses and rape the mother and her daughters.”
On Friday, the United Nations accused both the M23 and the Congolese army of serious, recent human rights abuses. They have not responded to requests for comment.
Relative calm has returned to Goma in the wake of its capture. But neither side appears willing to back down and fighting has continued in neighbouring South Kivu, where rebels want to advance.
(Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by David Holmes)
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