Home Central Africa Stranded DRC Soldiers and Families in Rebel-Occupied Goma Transferred to Capital

Central Africa

Stranded DRC Soldiers and Families in Rebel-Occupied Goma Transferred to Capital

May 1, 2025

Hundreds of stranded Congolese soldiers and police officers, along with their families, were being transferred from the rebel-controlled city of Goma in eastern Congo to the capital, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced Wednesday.

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For security reasons, no media outlets were allowed to film or photograph the operation. The news of the ICRC’s escort comes amid persistent tensions in eastern Congo, where fighting between Congo’s army and M23 continues, despite both sides having agreed to work toward a truce earlier this month.

Hundreds of stranded Congolese soldiers and police officers, along with their families, were being transferred from the rebel-controlled city of Goma in eastern Congo to the capital, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced Wednesday.

The soldiers and police officers have been taking refuge at the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Congo’s base since January, when the decades-long conflict in eastern Congo escalated as the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic Goma.

The operation is the result of an agreement reached between the Congolese government, the rebels, the U.N. mission and the ICRC, which was called upon as a neutral intermediary, the Red Cross said in a statement. Upon arrival in Kinshasa, the soldiers, police officers and their families will be taken in by Congolese authorities, it added.

Myriam Favier, the ICRC chief in Goma, said during a press briefing Wednesday that the transfer from Goma to Kinshasa, about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the west, is expected to last several days.The announcement was greeted with profound relief.

For security reasons, no media outlets were allowed to film or photograph the operation.The news of the ICRC’s escort comes amid persistent tensions in eastern Congo, where fighting between Congo’s army and M23 continues, despite both sides having agreed to work toward a truce earlier this month.

Conflict in eastern Congo is estimated to have killed 6 million people since the mid-1990s, in the wake of the Rwanda genocide. Some of the ethnic Hutu extremists responsible for the 1994 killing of an estimated 1 million of Rwanda’s minority ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates later fled across the border into eastern Congo, fueling the proxy fighting between rival militias aligned to the two governments.