‘I was running away, fleeing war – then the bullet hit me’

Nyiraba Herekeza hopes to get to a hospital soon. Ten days ago she was shot in the head as she fled fighting between Congolese government troops and rebels near her home in Gicanga, North Kivu.

The bullet is still lodged inside her right eye socket.

“I came from my house and ran to the forest. I was running away, fleeing the war, then the bullet came and hit me,” said Mrs Herekeza, 65, as she sat with her two grandchildren minutes after crossing the border with Rwanda.

“I don’t know which soldiers [shot me].”

Mrs Herekeza, who walked across the Gisenyi border crossing on Wednesday, hoped to receive treatment from Red Cross medics at Nkamira refugee camp, 14 miles to the east.

She and many others have been caught in the crossfire between the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo and soldiers loyal to General Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.

Kinshasa is on the hunt for Gen Ntaganda, a former rebel commander who fought the government before he was integrated into the army with other militants in a 2009 peace deal.

Clashes erupted after Congolese president Joseph Kabila announced last month he would try to arrest Gen Ntaganda, wanted by the ICC for recruiting child soldiers to fight in north-eastern Congo’s ethnic conflict.

Mr Kabila had previously said Gen Ntaganda was a lynchpin in the fragile peace deal that integrated his fighters. The region remains plagued by myriad rebel groups after the war which lasted between 1998 and 2003.

About 7,000 refugees had arrived at Nkamira camp by Wednesday, which the UN says is overstretched, with around 500 refugees arriving every day.

“We have gone beyond the capacity of this camp. We are trying to construct more shelters. We are expanding the water and sanitation facilities,” said Richard Ndaula, the UN emergency team leader in Nkamira. Budiya Emmanuel, 22, sits under a plywood structure with white plastic sheeting. Mr Emmanuel, a teacher trainee from Rutshuru, North Kivu, says he doesn’t know where his relatives are.

“I lost my family,” he said. “I walked for four days, all four nights I spent them in the forest.

“I had some dollars and the government soldiers, they took them. They told me to go back to my country in Rwanda, because I speak Kinyarwanda.”

Inside the white UN tent at the border crossing, Mrs Herekeza waits to register as a refugee. She had walked across the border in a pair of yellow plastic flip-flops.

“I’m feeling very bad,” she said. “The pain started in my head. Now it’s coming down and my eye is hurting very, very much. I didn’t get any medicine so far. I hope to get treatment at hospital.”