DR Congo’s Goma volcano: Desperate search for children missing after eruptionon May 25, 2021 at 9:56 am

The lava that flowed from Mount Nyiragongo on Saturday evening cut a path of destruction through a northern district of Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Around 500 houses were flattened and the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, says that more than 100 children are missing after having been separated from their parents.

Charles Kambale (pictured above) has been sorting through the rubble in the spot in Buhene district where his house used to be.

“I have not seen my two youngest children yet,” he said.

He was at a wedding with this wife when the eruption began. The children, six and two, were at home with his neighbours. He said he planned to make an announcement on the radio to help find them.

Some children have been seen picking through the rubble nearby, looking for scraps of metal or burned pots to sell.

Goma’s skyline lit up on Saturday as the lava erupted from a fissure in the side of the volcano.

Fearing that the lava would engulf parts of the city killing hundreds, as it did in 2002, thousands of people gathered their belongings and fled towards the nearby Rwandan border.

More than 3,500 people managed to get across the border on the night of the eruption amid the gridlocked traffic.

Many of Goma’s residents are used to fleeing. Armed groups have terrorised the region for more than 25 years and many people who live in the city moved there after violence hit their villages close by.

More than 30 people are known to have died. In the last eruption, 250 people were killed and 120,000 were made homeless.

Some children who fled the lava flow and have been separated from their parents are staying at a centre run by the Red Cross in Goma.

Red Cross workers and some government officials are trying to reunite families.

Four-year-old Benisse has been separated from his family since the eruption.

His mother was out selling fish at the marketplace when it happened and he ran from his neighbourhood with other children.

He spent most of the night walking to another town, Sake, 23km (14 miles) away from Goma, where he slept on the side of the road.

“I fled with my friends but I don’t even know where they are now, I am alone here,” Benisse told Gilbert Ramazani, who works for the government’s social affairs division.

Desperate mothers have been searching for their children going from centre to centre, to see if they have been found.

“We managed to find about 530 children who were separated from their families and fortunately we have been able to facilitate reunification of 360 children back with their parents,” Unicef chief field officer in Goma Jean Metenier told the BBC.

Sifa Ombene, 32, was out selling food when the eruption happened.

She rushed home but found that two of her children had fled.

“I went everywhere looking for them, I even went to the hospital morgue, they showed me bodies of dead children,” she said as she cuddled her four-year-old daughter Elea.

“I am so happy to find them here.”

All pictures by Olivia Acland.