Unarmed Banyamulenge villagers are “still waking up under bomb explosions” in the DR Congo turmoil

In South Kivu Province, the Congolese army and its Wazalendo-allied militia continue to attack villages with unarmed Banyamulenge inhabitants, particularly with bomb explosions, according to Congolese lawyer Moise Nyarugabo.

Just one day after alerting the world to the Congolese army and its Wazalendo-allied militia’s targeting of multiple rural communities in Minembwe, a group of villages in the Lulenge highlands in the Fizi Territory of South Kivu Province, on Thursday, Nyarugabo shared this on X on Friday, March 21.

According to Nyarugabo, “people in the highlands of Mwenga and Fizi, particularly those in Minembwe, are still waking up under bomb explosions.” The same FARDC and Wazalendo, who arrived from Fizi via Mukela and Mulima, have just started attacking in Mukoko in the direction of Kakenge again today, March 21, at 6 a.m. Right now, the other villages are still quiet.

Only God knows how long. Gahwera, Kivumu, Irumba (antennas), and Nyagishasha were among the settlements that were assaulted yesterday, Thursday, March 20, 25. They were under fire all day.

The FDLR, FARDC, and the Wazalendo, who travelled from Lulenge, headed the group of attackers that attacked Gahwera yesterday. For eight years, all of the people of Minembwe and Twirwaneho have been fighting to remain alive and respectable in their homeland.

The AFC/M23 rebellion’s deputy coordinator, Bertrand Bisimwa, claimed on March 4 that Kinshasa is attacking peaceful civilians with impunity.

According to him, the Congolese army coalition, which consists of Burundian military forces, Rwandan genocidal militias known as FDLR, a terrorist organization supported by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and established by former collaborators of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi, and Congolese militias known as Wazalendo, from Uvira and others who escaped Bukavu when the rebels took it on February 15, is responsible for the attacks.

The attacks, according to Bisimwa, are motivated by the fact that Banyamulenge people, who the regime views as Rwandans, make up a large portion of the villages.

These massacres that target defenseless individuals are intolerable and disgusting. The AFC/M23 will not stand idly by while innocent civilians are massacred; we will take responsibility if the world has decided to keep quiet about the criminal underworld of the Kinshasa dictatorship overseen by some states.