Mechanical diggers have spent days excavating the dark, volcanic earth of the city of Goma, preparing long trenches in which to bury the victims of one of the deadliest battles in decades in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Humanitarian workers in hazmat suits and teenagers in flip-flops and dirty masks tended to the dead amid the overwhelming stench.
“We have days of mass burials ahead of us,” said Myriam Favier, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Goma.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in Goma last week, according to early estimates provided by the U.N. peacekeeping operation in eastern Congo. The fighting between M23, a rebel group that the U.N. says is funded by Rwanda, and Congolese armed forces resulted in the rebels’ capture of Goma last week.
Millions have died in the past 30 years in Congo, where ethnic tensions and fighting over access to land and mineral resources have erupted into several wars. But rarely have so many been killed within just a few days, experts said.
Though most fighting has stopped in Goma in recent days, the city’s capture by M23 rebels has raised fears of a broader war between Congo, Rwanda and their respective allies.
The death toll is likely an underestimate, according to Vivian van de Perre, the deputy head of the U.N. peacekeeping force based in Goma.
Many bodies still have to be collected in areas of Goma that remain unreachable by humanitarian organizations. More than 2,800 additional Congolese have been wounded, nearly two thirds of them civilians, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The ongoing conflict has already drawn in mercenaries from Eastern Europe and soldiers from allied countries such as Burundi and Uganda. U.N. peacekeepers who have been deployed in eastern Congo for a dozen years have been accused by both sides of not doing enough to end the fighting.
M23 launched its incursion into Goma on Jan. 26 and fully captured the city on Jan. 30, after a monthslong offensive. More than 700,000 people have been displaced.
In front of the city’s airport on Tuesday, dozens of volunteers and Red Cross workers interred victims in mass graves dug in an already overcrowded cemetery.
The land where bodies can be buried in Goma is limited, Ms. Favier said. The city is cornered by Rwanda on its eastern side, Lake Kivu on its southern shore, and camps for displaced people and M23-controlled territories in its eastern and northern areas.
Rwanda has denied backing M23, even as officials from the United Nations highlight how its army and intelligence services train, arm and command the rebels. Experts say that Rwanda seeks to exploit mineral resources in eastern Congo by using M23 as a proxy group.
Since capturing Goma, M23’s fighters have been patrolling the streets aboard vehicles seized from the Congolese army. They wear tactical gear and carry automatic rifles and sophisticated electronic devices that give them the look of a conventional military.
This week, rebel leaders threatened to attack a U.N. base where 2,000 Congolese have taken shelter if peacekeepers didn’t hand them over. Those being protected at the base include high-ranking Congolese military and intelligence officers, the city’s mayor and civil servants, according to U.N. officials.
On Wednesday, M23 broke a unilateral cease-fire it had declared days earlier and captured a village in Goma’s neighboring province of South Kivu.
Among the many victims buried this week was a celebrated local boxer, Jean de Dieu Balezi, known as Kibomango, who was killed by a stray bullet, according to his relatives. Mr. Balezi founded the Friendship Boxing Club, where he trained generations of young boxers who were child soldiers, recruited by armed groups like M23 in eastern Congo.
M23 has ordered locals to clean Goma’s streets, but they remain littered with military uniforms abandoned by Congolese soldiers.
“Wherever I sweep, I find these,” Anna Mapendo said as she showed dozens of bullets collected in her courtyard. Ms. Mapendo and her husband said that about 20 Congolese soldiers broke into their home last week to escape from M23 fighters who were attacking the airport, which sits behind their house.
Two of their sons were wounded by bullets when they were in their courtyard, Ms. Mapendo said. She had just returned from the hospital to bring them rice and cassava.
Désiré Mirimba, Ms. Mapendo’s husband, accused Congolese soldiers of looting their home as they fled the rebels. “We feel safe for now with the new ones,” Mr. Mirimba said, referring to M23. “But we know that it’s very precarious.”
In Goma on Wednesday, pockets of the city remained unreachable to humanitarian agencies that lost months of aid in looting last week. Medicine, bags of rice from the World Food Program and cans of cooking oil were on sale across the city.
The freeze on foreign aid announced by the Trump administration last week has raised alarm over the deteriorating situation in eastern Congo, which had already been one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
Caleb Kabanda contributed reporting from Goma and Justin Makangara from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
