Nearly 400,000 people fled the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s city of Goma after the government issued an evacuation order for fear of a new eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano, local authorities said on Friday.
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“80,000 households, equivalent to about 400,000 inhabitants, left the city of Goma on Thursday,” they said in a report on an emergency meeting on the situation.
Tens of thousands of people flocked out of the city on Thursday, suffocating highways in response to the “preventive” evacuation.
Most have gone to Sake, about 25 kilometers west of Goma, and to the Rwandan border, in the northeast.
Support efforts are being organized to provide drinking water, food and other necessities, and workers are helping to reunite children separated from their families, the report said.
The evacuation “will remain in place” because “a land eruption or (eruption) under the lake can not be ruled out”, it says.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had previously estimated that nearly 400,000 of the city’s 600,000 people would be affected by the order, which applies to 10 of the 18 districts.
The wider Goma area has a population of about 2 million people.
Experts believe that Mount Nyiragongo is the most active and dangerous volcano in Africa.
It erupted back to life on Saturday, in an eruption that ended the next day after a lava flow went towards Goma and stopped at the edge of town but wiped out its way home.
Thirty-two people have died from burns or suffocation – a toll that rose to 34 when two people died in accidents during Thursday’s evacuation, authorities said.
Between 900 and 2,500 homes were destroyed during the weekend eruption, which corresponds to about 20,000 people homeless.
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