Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday denounced a deadly incursion on a hospital in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which the medical charity blamed on the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group.
An MSF statement said around 20 armed men from the group had entered the grounds of Kyeshero hospital in the eastern city of Goma, on the night of April 4 to 5, looking for people who had taken refuge there.
The M23 force captured Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu province, at the beginning of the year.
“During this operation, the MSF teams… witnessed these armed men shooting outside the hospital wards,” said the MSF statement.
“One person was killed and three others were wounded. Two members of hospital staff were severely beaten. Although the gunmen did not enter the wards, bullets landed inside some of them,” it said.
Margot Grelet, MSF’s emergency coordinator for Goma and North Kivu, said in the statement: “Such events are unacceptable and must never be repeated.”
MSF teams have had to deal with around 15 violent incidents since the beginning of the year in which local hospitals had been directly affected, the statement added.
The M23 has taken control of large swathes of the DRC’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu since 2021 and captured their capitals Goma and Bukavu in a lightning offensive earlier this year.
The DRC’s enormous mineral reserves are critical to global supplies of lithium and cobalt, used in cell batteries and electric vehicles, tantalum, tin, and gold used in electronic devices, and copper for power lines and uranium.
But they have also fueled and financed the multiple rebellions that have gripped the vast African country.
