By Idorenyin UMOREN
UYO
|FOREIGN| Nearly 300 foreign mercenaries hired by the Democratic Republic of Congo government to counter a swift offensive by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in the east have surrendered and were on their way home on Wednesday, January 29, 2025, according to REUTERS.
Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo, was captured by M23 earlier this week, cornering the mercenaries, remnants of Congo’s army and its allied militias against Lake Kivu and the Rwandan border.
With nowhere else to retreat to, they handed themselves over to United Nations peacekeeping troops in Goma, who then arranged for their transit home through neighbouring Rwanda.
“We are just relieved because we can go finally home … it’s a big relief,” said one, identifying himself as a Romanian who had been in Goma for about two years.
“Goma is devastated because of the war between the Rwandans and the Congolese,” he told Reuters as he crossed the border to Rwanda, declining to give his name.
Rwanda denies backing the rebels but says it has taken what it calls defensive measures, and accuses Congo of fighting alongside perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Hired to bolster Congo’s underpaid and disorganised army, the mercenaries operated high-tech military drones that had long been effectively grounded by Rwandan air defences, according to an analysis by the International Crisis Group.
Congo employed the services of Agemira RDC, a subsidiary of a Bulgarian-based parent company, for logistics, as well as Congo Protection, led by a former member of the French Foreign Legion, for training, said Henry-Pacifique Mayala from Kivu Security Tracker (KST), which maps unrest in eastern Congo.
With almost no coordination between the two military contractors, or other actors on the ground, the mercenaries’ role made the conflict even worse, Mayala said.
|TheNewsDESK|
*With inputs from REUTERS and other agency reports
