Despite the urgent needs, the deadly clashes in the past week in the South Kivu territories of Uvira, Walungu, Mwenga and Fizi have made it extremely difficult to assist the wounded and transport them to appropriate medical facilities. “We fear that many of those who have been wounded will not get the medical care they so desperately need,” said Djibril Mamadou Diallo, head of the ICRC’s office in Uvira.
Over the past few months, the ICRC has been working to build capacity at the Uvira hospital. It is training staff members to prepare for a large influx of wounded people and providing medical supplies and life-saving medicines. With the situation now deteriorating further, the ICRC is also dispatching an additional emergency surgical team to help handle the rising number of wounded people being admitted.
“Many men, women and children are finding themselves hemmed in by the fighting, which is taking place along multiple front lines. Some of them have hid in their homes for several days,” said Mr Diallo. “And while tens of thousands of civilians were able to flee, it was an unwelcome exodus for people already living in fragile circumstances. From one day to the next, they had to abandon everything and take to the road.”
The ICRC has also observed the growing use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects, such as shells and rockets, in highly populated areas. They have claimed many civilian victims and destroyed both their property and infrastructure critical to their survival. The use of such weapons in or near highly populated areas presents serious risks for civilians and increases the likelihood that such attacks will be indiscriminate in nature.
The ICRC reminds all parties to the conflict and everyone directly involved in the fighting of their obligations under international humanitarian law. In carrying out any military operations, they must avoid, or at the very least minimize, harm to civilians and civilian objects.
The ICRC urgently calls on all parties to make a particular effort to safeguard civilians and infrastructure that is critical to the survival of affected communities, and to help ensure wounded people can get the medical treatment they require.
About the ICRC
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a neutral, impartial and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate that stems from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other violence, doing everything it can to protect their lives and dignity and to relieve their suffering, often alongside its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners.
For more information, please contact:
Francine Kongolo, ICRC Kinshasa, tel: +243 (0) 81 992 23 28, email: fkongolo@icrc.org
Eléonore Asomani, ICRC Dakar, tel: +221 78 186 46 87, email: easomani@icrc.org
