GOMA — A rebel group created just seven months ago seized the strategic provincial capital of Goma, home to more than a million people in eastern Congo, and its international airport Tuesday, according to a rebel spokesman and witnesses. Explosions and machine-gun fire rocked the lakeside city as the M23 rebels pushed forward on two fronts: toward the city center and along the road that leads to Bukavu, another provincial capital which lies to the south. Civilians ran down sidewalks looking for cover and children shouted in alarm. A man clutched a thermos as he ran. By early afternoon the gunfire had stopped and M23 soldiers who are believed to be backed by Rwanda, marched down the potholed main boulevards, unimpeded. Their senior commanders paraded around the town in all-terrain vehicles, waving to the thousands of people who left their barricaded houses to see them. The United Nations peacekeepers, known by their acronym MONUSCO, were not helping the government forces during Tuesday's battle because they do not have a mandate to engage the rebels, said Congolese military spokesman Olivier Hamuli, who expressed frustration over the lack of action by the peacekeepers. “MONUSCO is keeping its defensive positions. They do not have the mandate to fight the M23. Unfortunately, the M23 did not obey the MONUSCO warnings and went past their positions (at the airport). We ask that the MONUSCO do more,” he said. The rebels are believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda, which is accused of equipping them with sophisticated arms, including night vision goggles and 120 mm mortars. Evidence is mounting of the role played by the neighboring country and on Friday, the United Nations Group of Experts is expected to release its final report, detailing the role Rwanda has played in the recruitment, financing and arming of the new rebel movement. Congolese government spokesman Lambert Mende said that Rwandan soldiers had crossed into Goma, hiking over footpaths across a volcano that looms between the two countries. “Goma is in the process of being occupied by Rwanda,” said Mende, speaking from Congo's distant capital of Kinshasa. “We have people who saw the Rwandan army traverse our frontier at the Nyamuragira volcano. They have occupied the airport and they are shooting inside the town. Our army is trying to riposte but this poses an enormous problem for them — this is an urban center where hundreds of thousands of people live,” he said. A Congolese colonel, who was at the frontline in Goma before the city fell, said that the soldiers he saw were Rwandan. Neither his claim nor Mende's could be independently verified. — AP
