40,000 flee DRC fighting into Burundi

Thousands of new Congolese refugees are arriving en masse in Burundi to escape fighting between M23 rebels and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and their allies in South Kivu.

The Rwanda-backed M23 rebels claimed control of the city of Uriva on Wednesday.

New reception sites have been set up to manage the influx, including the Kansega transit site in Ndava zone, in Bujumbura province near the border with the DRC.

Living conditions there are dire: no water, no toilets, no shelters. Stripped of everything, refugees say they went through hell before reaching Burundi.

"Getting here was difficult. We went through heavy shelling and bullets, and I personally lost my younger brother who was killed by a bomb," said 32-year-old Fidèle Edimbe, a father of three originally from Uvira.

"That’s when we realized how bad things had become, and we decided to cross the Rusizi River to reach this place," he added.

Between 5 and 11 December, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) recorded 40,000 new arrivals of Congolese people in Burundi. They are spread across three transit sites — Kansega, Cishemere and Gatumba.

UNHCR representative Brigitte Mukanga-Engo visited Kansega on 11 December. She confirmed the desperate conditions and acknowledged severe resource shortages, calling for urgent mobilisation.

"We are of course working with the immigration services and ONPRA, the government agency in charge of refugees," she said.

"There is also the Directorate of Repatriation, because among the people crossing, a significant number are Burundians — Burundians who had been refugees in Congo and are now returning because of this crisis," she added.

With the soaring number of arrivals, UNHCR has already announced the upcoming opening of a new refugee camp in Bweru, in eastern Burundi.

Since January and as of this summer, Burundi hosted more than 71,000 Congolese refugees, including some 18,000 in the Musenyi camp alone.