Romanian mercenaries led by Horațiu Potra and stranded in Congo evacuate to Rwanda

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bucharest confirmed that the evacuation of Romanian citizens present in Congo where they worked as security agents will take place on Wednesday.

While the Romanian mercenaries, hired by Horațiu Potra‘s military company to fight for Congo, entered Rwanda under the strict supervision of Rwandan security forces, the M23 rebels consolidated their control over the largest city in eastern Congo, Goma, on Wednesday.

Approximately 300 Romanians were allowed to leave the UN base in Goma and left for Kigali, Rwanda, from where they will take a plane to Romania, local media reports.

After the city fell to M23, the Romanians taken to Congo by Horațiu Potra isolated themselves in a UN base or other safe locations outside the city of Goma. Among the 290 Romanians who worked as security agents, there were four wounded, said Constantin Timofte, who leads them, exclusively for TVR. The national army gave up fighting and we were forced to retreat,” Timofte explained.

UN sources and Rwandan officials said they were mercenaries from Congo. Several held Romanian passports. One of them told Reuters he was Romanian and had been in Goma for about two years.

After being searched, the mercenaries were put on buses and driven away from the border. As Rwandan-backed rebels have gained ground over the past two years, Congo has turned to private military companies to try to shore up its defenses.
The mercenaries have provided training and advice to Congolese troops and were deployed to protect Goma, but they appeared to offer little resistance when M23 marched into the city center on Monday.
The M23 is the latest in a Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed insurgency to rock Congo since the Rwandan genocide 30 years ago. In 1994, ethnic Hutu extremists killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus before being ousted from power by Tutsi forces led by Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000.
In the Congolese capital Kinshasa, 1,000 miles west of Goma, protesters attacked a UN compound and embassies, including those of Rwanda, France and the United States, expressing anger at what they saw as foreign interference.
Looters ransacked the Kenyan embassy. The US State Department has ordered embassy staff to leave Congo, two sources said. One of the sources, familiar with the events, said they would leave on Wednesday.
A third source said only non-essential staff had been notified. Congo and the head of the UN peacekeeping force said Rwandan troops were present in Goma, supporting their M23 allies.
Rwanda said it was defending itself against the threat from Congolese militias, without directly commenting on whether its troops had crossed the border. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke separately with the Congolese and Rwandan presidents on Tuesday and urged Rwanda to protect civilians, Dujarric said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) announced on Tuesday that it had convened the Inter-institutional Crisis Cell for crisis management, since the beginning of the deterioration of the conflict situation in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Romanian citizens are present. According to the MAE, these are both civilians and “private employees of the DRC government, on an army training mission”. These are several dozen Romanian mercenaries from the private army managed by Horațiu Potra. They were on a mission to train the military forces of the DRC. “As a result of the dynamic developments of the conflict in the North Kivu region against the backdrop of the active resumption of the advance of a local armed group, the acute deterioration of the security situation blocked the group of Romanian citizens who were active in the area, based on a private contract, especially in the city of Goma”, the MAE specified.
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