In Bulengo, each tarp-covered hut – among the tens of thousands that make up this immense camp of distress – houses a piece of the violent history that has been being written in the province of North Kivu, in the far east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), since November 2021. It's the story of the exodus of ever-growing numbers of families thrown onto the roads by rebel military conquests, laying down their mattresses from one day to the next on inhospitable terrain strewn with volcanic rocks. Always a little further from their original habitat. Many of them have continued to flee the advance of Rwandan troops and their local M23 affiliates to the outskirts of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu.

So, when the rebel tornado struck Saké on Thursday, January 23, the last hurdle before Goma, all these displaced people found themselves trapped. They had already reached the end of the impasse marked by the impassable shores of Lake Kivu. This time, there was no hope of another desperate escape. The worst was therefore to be feared for those huddled tent to tent on the main axis of the offensive toward Goma to the west of the town. There was plenty to worry about. Had the conquering forces hunted down local militiamen, known as "wazalendo," between the tents, as some of their displaced families lived there? How many mortar shells had fallen on the makeshift shelters housing, in the case of the Bulengo camp, almost 40,000 households, i.e. some 250,000 people?

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