Goma Hospitals Swamped with Casualties, Food and Water Low as M-23 Rebels Take Over Eastern DRC City
Humanitarian Crises 31/01/2025 •
UN peacekeeping vehicle MONUSCO, patrols streets of Goma, DRC as the rebel takeover of the city sends hundreds of thousands of people fleeing.

Hospitals in Goma, the city at the epicentre of the M23 rebel advance in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are being flooded with casualties. Health facilities and workers have been targeted in attacks. Humanitarian food stores are being looted. Women are at increased risk of rape, and the safe evacuation of wounded has been impeded by the closure of Goma airport, said the World Health Organization and other UN bodies at a joint press briefing Friday in Geneva on the worsening crisis in the DRC.

There are currently hundreds of people in Goma’s overloaded hospitals, mostly with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, said Adelheid Marschang, DRC Emergency Response Coordinator for WHO.

Some 700 people are believed to have been killed and 2800 injured, said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking from UN Headquarters in New York City later on Friday.

Marschang stressed that WHO was especially worried for the health and safety of women and girls who are at a higher risk of violence, including rape.

With people  water stations and electricity grids damaged, and bodies of victims visible on Goma’s main streets, the conditions were rife for the spread of infectious diseases like cholera and measles, Marschang added. The fighting has led to a halt to immunizations against mpox – in the eastern DRC region which is the epicenter of the current epidemic, in which more than 20,000 cases were reported in North and South Kivu in 2024, and 6,000 in the past six weeks.  See related story here:

US Aid Pause Hampers Response to Multiple African Disease Outbreaks and Escalating DRC Conflict

The eastern DRC region also reported 21 672 cholera cases, including 59 deaths, and 11 710 measles cases, including 115 deaths last year. Before  Goma airport closed on Saturday, WHO was able to send critical medical supplies for trauma and emergency care, infection prevention, and cholera, among others. WHO was providing tents for hospitals to expand their treatment capacities, she also said. But with air and road passages out of the conflict zone blocked, evacuation of hundreds of wounded people remained in limbo, the WHO coordinator noted.

Food insecurity another worry

Jens Laerke, of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said colleagues remaining in Goma had reported heavy small arms fire, mortar fire and the presence of dead bodies in the street. There were reports of gender-based violence and rape, committed by M-23 fighters, and the looting of a humanitarian warehouse and other facilities.

He reiterated recent calls for humanitarian pauses to facilitate the safe evacuation of wounded people and civilians trapped in combat zones, as well as the safe reopening of Goma airport and land crossings between DRC and Rwanda so as to enable people to flee the violence.

Speaking from the DRC capital of Kinshasa, Shelley Thakral, of the World Food Programme, said that WFP had been obligated to halt its activities. She also expressed concern about rising food insecurity in Goma as well as rising food prices as airports and major access roads remain blocked. The next 24 hours would be critical, she said, as people started to run low on supplies.

OCHA has allocated $17 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) to support lifesaving assistance – yet it remains unclear how relief agencies can even mobilize the aid to people in need, given the ongoing hostilities, officials also said.

Internally displaced fleeing Goma, where they once sought refuge

Displaced persons near Goma – most camps have now been emptied due to the M-23 rebel’s advances.

Goma, which sits along Lake Kivu adjacent to the Rwandan border, was once a place of refuge for some 700,000 displaced people fleeing rebel violence elsewhere in eastern Congo. But since the flare-up of hostilities near the city at the beginning of January, the area has now seen an emptying out of the massive camps that had developed on the outskirts of the city.

On Friday, sites hosting at least 300,000 internally displaced people were completely emptied due to the rapid advancements of the frontlines. Non-essential humanitarian staff had been relocated, but critical personnel remained in Goma. The UN’s emergency fund CERF had immediately allocated US$17 million to support the humanitarian response.

Sudan and DRC – civilians caught in crossfire

On Friday, horrific images also emerged in Sudan from Al Saudi Teaching Hospital in Sudan’s city of Al Fasher, reported Patrick Youssef, Regional Director, Africa, for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He described how dozens of people had reportedly been killed in an attack that damaged the hospital building, which the ICRC supports.

At the same time, in Goma, heavy shelling and shooting send more than 100 people within 24 hours to the city’s N’dosho Hospital, where an ICRC surgical team is based, he observed, noting that “they would normally receive this number of patients in a month.”

These were two different conflicts in different countries, but there is a common thread that is alarming, he noted: civilians were paying an increasingly heavy price for brutal armed conflicts.

–Updated 2.2.2024 with estimates of casualties from Goma fighting.

Image Credits: MONUSCO/Aubin Mukoni, © UNHCR/Blaise Sanyila.

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