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HEY GRABBED blankets, clothes and mattresses and rushed out of their houses at dawn on May 27th. In their tens of thousands, they streamed out of the city of Goma, in eastern Congo, terrified of what its volcano might do next. Some fled east towards the border with Rwanda (see map). Others hurried west to the Congolese town of Sake, around 20km away, clogging the dirt road from Goma with motorbikes, cars and pedestrians. Hundreds of people rushed down to Goma’s port to pile onto boats heading to Bukavu, a city at the southern end of Lake Kivu.
CHARLES KAMBALE stands amidst smoking, sulphurous rubble, half-heartedly picking scraps of metal off the ground. “This is my home,” he says, quietly. Molten lava began spilling out of fractures in the side of Mount Nyiragongo, a volcano that looms over the city of Goma in eastern Congo, at around 6pm on May 22nd. Mr Kambale was at a wedding with his wife when the eruptions began. His two youngest children, aged six and two, were at home with his neighbours. He has not seen them since. “I plan to make an announcement on the radio to try and find them,” he says.
Congo: Pausing For Selfies After Volcano Eruption! Published May 24th, 2021 - 09:54 GMT
Thousands of residents of east Democratic Republic of Congo return to Goma, after the river of lava from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo volcano halts (Twitter)
Highlights
But the military governor of North Kivu province said the city was spared by a matter of a few hundred yards after the lava halted near Buhene on the outskirts of Goma .
Owners of homes that were caught up in a volcanic eruption paused to take selfies in front of their burning properties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Monday May 24 2021
Congolese fleeing from Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), sleep with their belongings on a street after the Nyiragongo volcano erupted near the border in Gisenyi, Rwanda, on May 23, 2021.PHOTO/ AFP
Summary
People had begun fleeing Goma city even before official confirmation that Nyiragongo had erupted at around 7:00 pm Saturday.
Nyiragongo last erupted on January 17, 2002, killing more than 100 people and covering almost all of the eastern part of Goma with lava, including half of the airport s landing strip.
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A river of red-hot lava stopped Sunday on the edge of Goma, sparing the eastern DR Congo city from disaster after an overnight eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano sent thousands of terrified residents fleeing in panic.