Refugees fleeing DRC conflict tell of deadly journey

Atosha winced as she recalled the 15 minutes she spent in the fast-flowing Rusizi River, which separates the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Burundi, on a night in late February.

- Carlos Mureithi

"I was terrified," the 23-year-old said of her journey of about 130 metres, spent clinging to a makeshift float alongside a young man whom she had paid to take her to the Burundian side. “It was my first time crossing that river and I had no option.”

Her relief on reaching the riverbank quickly turned to anguish, however, when she learned that her younger sisters, aged 10 and 14, had been swept away by the current.

“I stood there and started crying,” said Atosha, one of tens of thousands of Congolese refugees sheltering in a stadium in Cibitoke province, a few kilometres from the border.

The refugees risking their lives to cross to Burundi are fleeing conflict in eastern DRC, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has made swift advances since January in an escalation of a long-running conflict rooted in the spillover into DRC of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and the struggle for DRC’s vast mineral resources.

Atosha said that on 14 February, Congolese soldiers retreating from the city of Bukavu entered her home town in Bafuliiru Chiefdom to the south. Many were wounded and their arrival spread panic in the town.