Goma | Tuesday
AT least 13 looters have been shot dead in this town ravaged by volcanic lava and those tempted to steal in houses and stores have been warned by radio there would be no mercy.
Military sources late on Monday confirmed reports that 13 people, including seven soldiers, had been shot by officers of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), the Rwandan-backed rebel group that controls the Democratic Republic of Congo town of Goma.
Some of those executed were caught looting the offices of the United Nations observer mission in the DRC, Monuc, and a warehouse of the UN World Food Programme.
On Tuesday morning, the radio station in Goma broadcast a chilling warning from the rebel group: “Whoever is caught looting red-handed will only get judgement from God.”
On Monday, storage tanks in a petrol station engulfed in hardening lava exploded as people were trying to steal fuel. Rebel officials put the death toll at between 60 and 100.
While many businesses, shops and private houses were not touched by the flow of lava that slowly enveloped a large swathe of Goma on Thursday, many of their occupants returned at the weekend to find that human scavengers had cleaned them out.
Meanwhile, residents spent a night almost free of the violent earth movements that forced scores of residents to sleep outdoors on Sunday night.
The risk of new eruptions by Mount Nyiragongo was apparently over according to a French vulcanologist working with the United Nations.
This could mean that the United Nations will begin large-scale food distribution in the city itself. The world organisation had previously been reluctant to do so, warning that Goma must first be declared safe.
The United Nations has set up camps in neighbouring Rwanda to shelter and feed the 300 000 or so Goma residents who fled their homes on Thursday.
But the camps remained virtually empty as the Congolese preferred to return home as soon as possible. – AFP