Fighting by rebels disrupts Goma’s water and power supplies
Fighting by rebels disrupts Goma’s water and power supplies
Fighting by rebels disrupts Goma’s water and power supplies
Due to a surge in rebel warfare in the area, the main power lines to the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been severed, cutting off power to hospitals and water systems, the electrical network operator stated on Tuesday.
The main power lines to Goma, the seat of North Kivu province and a population of over 2 million people, were cut off by fighting between the Congolese government and the M23 rebels, according to Virunga National Park, which runs the network that provides roughly 80% of the city’s electricity.
Experts from the UN and Congo claim that neighboring Rwanda provides support to the M23, an armed group headed by Tutsis. It is denied by Rwanda. According to a park spokesperson on Tuesday, bombing continued around the engineers even though they had gained access to start fixing the main line.
The UN announced last Friday that additional operations to strengthen Goma’s security perimeter were initiated by the Congolese army and the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO as a result of recent clashes with the M23 rebels that have gotten closer to the city.
According to UN estimates, the most recent fighting has caused nearly 300,000 people to evacuate their homes, raising the total number of persons displaced by the M23 war to approximately 1 million. Huge camps for the displaced are located outside of Goma, and according to Virunga National Park, these camps acquire their clean water from pumping systems that need on energy to run.
It is a crime against mankind when there is a power outage of this kind. The city’s hospitals and pumping stations make use of this electricity, according to North Kivu province’s civil society coordinator John Banyene. “The consequences are dramatic for the inhabitants of Goma and the displaced populations of North Kivu,” he stated.
