‘Women give birth on the ground’: Congolese forced to return home find devastation

Residents try to salvage some of their belongings from where their home once stood, now destroyed and burned during clashes in Sake, DRC, in January. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Congolese people forced to return to their home town from displacement camps when the M23 rebel group advanced on the city of Goma earlier this year have described scenes of devastation, with hundreds of homes destroyed by fighting and no opportunity to work or access aid.

As M23 entered Goma, a regional humanitarian hub that hosted hundreds of thousands of people displaced by previous rounds of fighting in the region, more than 100,000 people left camps around the city to return to their homes.