JAKARTA - More than 20,000 people lost their homes and 40 others were lost in a volcanic eruption in eastern Congo that killed dozens of people and continued to cause powerful earthquakes in the nearby city of Goma, the United Nations said on Wednesday, May 26.
The eruption on Saturday, May 22, caused a river of lava to flow down the hillside from Mount Nyiragongo. The disaster destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands to evacuate.
Ash clouds caused by the eruption have closed airports in Goma and Bukavu, and are likely to cause respiratory illnesses, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.
People who left their homes have lost valuable possessions including motorcycles destroyed by lava flows, or looted, OCHA said.
More than 200 small and medium-magnitude earthquakes have caused cracks in buildings and roads in Goma, which is 15 kilometres from Nyiragongo. So far no fatalities have been reported, but the cracks have caused panic among residents unsure whether the danger has passed.
"Yesterday was very small, here just across from my house, but today it's widening." Creepy. We are worried that the building could collapse and our children could fall," Susanne Bigakura (65), referring to the cracks caused by the eruption of the mountain reported by Antara from Reuters.
The 1.7-kilometre lava river that closed the main road north of Goma was still too hot to get rid of, OCHA said, preventing trade and aid deliveries to one of Africa's most food-prone places.
However, some work has begun to restore the road, according to images uploaded by the government on Twitter.
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