forcing Congolese troops to fall back to about 1 kilometer from
Kibumba, according to newswires.
Kibumba is at 28 kilometers north of the provincial capital of Goma.
A Western diplomat told AFP the town of Kibumba is the "last bolt before Goma."
MONUSCO gunships made sorties, strafing M23 so as to stymie the
insurgents' push.
MONUSCO spokesman Mamodj Mounoubaï said the sorties of gunships were
motived by M23 "attacks against civilians."
According to AFP, about 2,000 IDPs fled the combat zone to add to the
hundreds of thousands of civilians already displaced for the last 4
months.
The humanitarian situation in Goma itself is catastrophic, with an
influx of more than 10,000 IDPs.
Some of the fleeing IDPs are heading southward toward the hamlets of
Minigi or Kanyaruchainya; while others north-bound, towards Rumangabo,
the headquarters of the Virunga National Park.
On his part, Dr Emmanuel de Mérode, the chief warden of the Park,
filed a terse post today at 6:00 HRS (GMT + 2) titled "Heavy bombing
around Rumangabo" that says:
"All morning, yesterday, the area around our headquarters at Rumangabo
came under heavy
shelling.
"This made it impossible to launch the operation in the Gorilla
Sector, as we had planned to do yesterday.
"It's early morning, just before
dawn, and the bombing has started again, but further north around
Kiwanja, Rutshuru."
As Dr de Mérode's post doesn't provide further details, I can only
piece together troop movements based on his earlier logs.
In early July, Dr de Mérode talked about FARDC "build-up of troops at
Rugare," at "about 4 miles south" of his HQ in Rumangabo.
He also said that around 2,000 FARDC troops were billeted at his
nearby station of Rwindi.
I can therefore surmise that, while FARDC troops came under heavy
attack in the north, some M23 units, in a bold coordinated tactical
maneuver, had moved in a counterclockwise sweep southwest then
eastward against those FARDC troops billeted at Rugare and Rwindi, in
the hope of achieving the following 2 objectives:
1) To trigger yet another mass desertion in the ranks of FARDC; and
2) To envelop troops entrenched in and around Goma in a perfect pincer
movement.
Well, in planning their move, M23 might not have factored in the
warlike mindset of FARDC troops in Rugare and Rwindi who, as Dr de
Mérode has noted in his earlier posts, are inured to combat.
As the fighting is ebbing northward toward Kiwanja, the logical
conclusion is that the M23 pincer movement was successfully broken by
the FARDC, with the critical backing of MONUSCO gunships.
While tactital positions are in a flux, the intensity of these latest
insurgent attacks and the tactical thinking invested in their planning
clearly attest to the presence of Rwandan tacticians and battle
management specialists within the ranks of M23.
In an ideal world, at this stage of the hostilities, the DRC should've
already declared war on Rwanda!
***
PHOTO CREDITS: AFP
VIA: leparisien.fr
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