Fighting Rages in Congo's Goma while Embassies Attacked in Capital

Protesters clash with riot police forces in front of the French Embassy in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo January 28, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Nyem
Protesters clash with riot police forces in front of the French Embassy in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo January 28, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Nyem
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Fighting Rages in Congo's Goma while Embassies Attacked in Capital

Protesters clash with riot police forces in front of the French Embassy in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo January 28, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Nyem
Protesters clash with riot police forces in front of the French Embassy in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo January 28, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Nyem

Dead bodies lay in the streets, gunfire rang out and hospitals were overwhelmed in east Congo's largest city on Tuesday, as M23 rebels backed by Rwanda faced pockets of resistance from army and pro-government militias.

A day after the rebels marched into the lakeside city, protesters in the capital attacked a UN compound and embassies including those of Rwanda, France and the United States, expressing anger at what they said was foreign interference.

M23 fighters entered Goma on Monday in the worst escalation since 2012 of a three-decade conflict rooted in the long fallout from the Rwandan genocide and control of Congo's abundant mineral resources.

The Congolese government and the head of UN peacekeeping have said Rwandan troops were present in Goma, backing up their M23 allies. Rwanda has said it was adopting a defensive posture because of the threat posed to it by Congolese militias, Reuters reported.

Dozens of Democratic Republic of Congo troops had surrendered, but some soldiers and pro-government militiamen were holding out, residents and UN sources said.

People in several neighbourhoods reported small arms fire and some loud explosions on Tuesday morning.

"I have heard the crackle of gunfire from midnight until now ... it is coming from near the airport," an elderly woman in Goma's northern Majengo neighbourhood, close to the airport, told Reuters by phone.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told a briefing in Geneva colleagues had reported "heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets."

"We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property ... and humanitarian health facilities being hit," he added. Other international aid officials described hospitals overwhelmed with wounded being treated in hallways.

"The town is a powderkeg," Willy Ngumbi, a bishop in Goma, said. Explosives had hit a house where priests were staying and the maternity ward of a Catholic hospital on Monday, he said by phone. "The youth are armed and the fighting is now taking place in the town."

FEAR OF SPIRAL

The UN and global powers fear the conflict could spiral into a regional war akin to those of 1996-1997 and 1998-2003 that killed millions, mostly from hunger and disease.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance that includes the M23, has suggested the rebels' aim is to replace President Felix Tshisekedi and his government in the capital 1,600 km (1,000 miles) away.

In Kinshasa, angry crowds burned tyres, chanted anti-Rwanda slogans and attacked diplomatic installations of several countries seen as favourable to Rwanda, leading the police to fire tear gas.

A European diplomatic source said the Rwandan, French, US, Ugandan and Kenyan embassies had been targeted.

"What Rwanda is doing is with the complicity of France, the US and Belgium. The Congolese people are fed up. How many times to we have to die?" said protester Joseph Ngoy.

The United Nations has been caught up in the fighting with a peacekeeping force. South Africa said three of its peacekeepers were killed in a crossfire between government troops and rebels and a fourth had succumbed to wounds from earlier fighting, bringing the number of its fatalities in the past week to 13.

It said President Cyril Ramaphosa had spoken by phone to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and the two had agreed on the need for a ceasefire.

On Monday, Rwanda's army reported five people killed and 26 injured in exchanges of fire with Congolese troops near the border.

The fighting has sent thousands of people streaming out of Goma, a regional hub for humanitarian aid for displaced people. Hundreds of thousands have fled fighting since the start of the year, on top of 3 million displaced in eastern Congo last year.

FAST OFFENSIVE

M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed insurgencies that have brought tumult to Congo since the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda thirty years ago, when Hutu extremists killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then were toppled by the Tutsi-led forces that still dominate Rwanda.

M23 fighters took up arms again in 2022, a decade after a previous insurgency that briefly captured Goma.

In recent weeks they made swift gains through North Kivu province on the border with Rwanda, ignoring calls from world leaders to halt their offensive.

Rwanda has dismissed calls for troops to leave, saying its security is threatened by ethnic Hutu militias, some with links to the extremists who murdered close to 1 million people during the 1994 genocide. UN experts say Kigali has deployed 3,000-4,000 troops in eastern Congo to support the M23.

Congo's government has called on international powers to pressure Rwanda, potentially via sanctions, to end the M23 offensive.

In a phone call with Congo president Tshisekedi on Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio "condemned the assault on Goma by the Rwanda-backed M23 and affirmed the United States’ respect for the sovereignty of the DRC," the State Department said.

The UN Security Council was due to discuss the crisis again on Tuesday, diplomats said.



Chinese Navy Helicopter Flies within 10 Feet of Philippine Patrol Plane Over Disputed Shoal 

A Chinese military helicopter flies close to a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic (BFAR) aircraft above Scarborough shoal on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
A Chinese military helicopter flies close to a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic (BFAR) aircraft above Scarborough shoal on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
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Chinese Navy Helicopter Flies within 10 Feet of Philippine Patrol Plane Over Disputed Shoal 

A Chinese military helicopter flies close to a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic (BFAR) aircraft above Scarborough shoal on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
A Chinese military helicopter flies close to a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic (BFAR) aircraft above Scarborough shoal on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)

A Chinese navy helicopter flew within 10 feet (3 meters) of a Philippine patrol plane on Tuesday in a disputed area of the South China Sea, as the Filipino pilot warned by radio: “You are flying too close, you are very dangerous.”

The helicopter was attempting to force a Cessna Caravan turbo-prop plane belonging to the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources out of what China claims is its airspace over the hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.

An Associated Press journalist and other invited foreign media representatives on the plane witnessed the tense 30-minute standoff as the Philippine plane pressed on with its low-altitude patrol around Scarborough with the Chinese navy helicopter hovering close above it or flying to its left in cloudy weather.

“You are flying too close, you are very dangerous and endangering the lives of our crew and passengers,” the Philippine pilot told the Chinese navy helicopter by radio at one point. “Keep away and distance your aircraft from us, you are violating the safety standard set by FAA and ICAO.”

The pilot was referring to the standard distance between aircraft required by the US Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organization to prevent air disasters.

The Philippine Coast Guard and the Bureau of Fisheries said in a statement that they remain “committed to asserting our sovereignty, sovereign rights and maritime jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea, despite the aggressive and escalatory actions of China.”

They referred to the Philippine name for the stretch of waters in the South China Sea closer to the Philippines’ western coast.

Chinese officials did not immediately comment on the incident, but in past encounters they have steadfastly asserted China's sovereign rights over the Scarborough and surrounding waters and warned that its forces would protect the country's territorial interests at all costs.

Tuesday's encounter, which is expected to be protested by the Philippine government, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long territorial standoff in one of the world’s busiest trade routes, which involves China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

Confrontations on the high seas have spiked between Chinese and Philippine coast guards in the last two years at Scarborough, a traditional fishing area, and the Second Thomas Shoal, where a grounded Philippine navy ship has served as a territorial outpost since 1999 but has since been closely watched by Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships.

China deployed its coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships around Scarborough after a tense standoff with Philippine ships in 2012.

The following year, the Philippines brought its disputes with China to international arbitration. A 2016 decision by a United Nations-backed arbitration panel invalidated China’s expansive claim in the South China Sea based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

China, a signatory to the UNCLOS like the Philippines, refused to participate in the arbitration, rejected its outcome and continues to defy it.