Location is central Goma, 26th Jan 2025. All the soldiers in this recording are South African
All bunched up with ammo laying right next to them – one well placed mortar round/drone drop and you get mass casualty event
The South Africans here were attacked in the early hours of the morning by M23 rebels. Safe to say the South Africans gave the rebels an extremely bloody nose, as not only did the rebels fall back after only killing 9 South Africans, but they actively avoided South African bases as they marched to their objective, Goma.
Fpvs and droppers would be great
Whos who is fighting here and how it happened?
Is this an existing conflict or something that kicked off recently? I’ve seen a lot of videos about it this morning
Is it me is the South African military not as good as it was during the Cold War.
M23 are wiping the Floor with Anyone these past few days, Rawanda gave them Heavy weapons and now they are advancing like crazy especially under the cover of darkness
If Goma falls it will be HUGE
Love the guy plugging his ears. Guess he wasn’t supplied ear pro
Shouldn’t they all be firing at the enemy?
[deleted]
I know modern helmets are better, but the PASGT just looks badass.
Don’t know which army is more incompetent than the other.
The rough 66 and 7 they fought the Congo war, with their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore
TL;DR for people who are “wtf is happening here?” :
-The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a mess, and basically has been since independence and tbh will be for the foreseeable future. The government is ineffective and corrupt and their authority does not realistically spread too far from the capital Kinshasa, though there have been efforts (with varying levels of success) to address the significant shortcomings in governance. The only thing a person of authority won’t steal in the Congo is a red-hot stove.
-In the east of DRC, near the lakes, is a region called Kivu, this area in particular is a very messy mess. God does not love Kivu, history is testament to such. The area is cursed with mineral richness. If you’ve ever watched a poverty porn documentary shot in the DRC, you know, the ones where a 5 year old or a mother with 12 children is working for $1 a day to dig up cobalt, that’s likely Kivu.
-In this messy mess is a rebel group called M23 who have been fighting the government and other rebel groups since the early 2010s. These rebels have support from Rwanda (money, weapons, etc.) Broadly speaking, they’re not nice people and basically everyone wishes they would disappear.
-While indeed a rebel group, as in they’re fighting the central government, M23 combines many characteristics of both a terror group and a drug cartel.
-The jewel of Kivu is Goma, the capital. It is a dirty, poor, corrupt, violent, ad-hoc settlement where a lot of the rare-earth minerals in your phone start their global journey. Controlling Goma means you now control that resource hub. Bonus points for Goma, it has the best (relatively speaking for DRC) infrastructure in the region which is quite useful for all manners of smuggling and other things that bad guys do to make their bad guy money.
-Within the last few days M23 has been going balls-to-the-wall to try to get Goma, and according to sources they’re now in the city.
-The South Africans in this video and the others going around as of late are part of a peace keeping force trying to prevent mass killings, mass rape, mass looting, and mass abductions. These unfortunate events are fairly common in the region, but that’s not really the peace keepers fault as they’re (in theory) more-so a backstop for government forces than an actual fighting force themselves.
-Why though is M23 attacking these peacekeepers? Well, sometimes rebels YOLO, but also too if they can endanger the mission then it’s possible that South Africa and other states who sent peacekeepers will pull out their soldiers. This would leave the region open to more exploitation from rebel groups (and quite honestly the government too). But as can be seen from this video and others, M23 isn’t too great at taking on more professional armies (though several peacekeepers have died in combat so far). Also too it’s important to remember that rebel groups like M23 aren’t professional forces, so it could be down to a command/mob level directive to start attacking bases like this rather than a strategic choice from higher up in the M23 ‘leadership’.
Aww man please lord keep these soldiers save and bring our troops back!!
I will say this. African wars are almost always won by the side with better logistics because the competency of the combatants is usually not amazing, logistics in Africa is hard, and if you’re not being supplied then there’s little shame in desertion.
At least these guys look reasonably well supplied. Obviously one pile of mortar rounds and some
Soviet era crates of ammo may not tell the whole story.
imagine if the opposite side used just one mavic and dropped grenades on that mortar ammo cache on which all soldiers are sitting down.
Surprised that noone seems to be speaking english, even the NCO/Officer shouting orders, uses some kind of creole like meshup
What makes this kinda scary is that the South African forces don’t have the equipment nor the funds to fund proper equipment, some soldiers are lucky to be issued with an R5.
Seen a post on conflict observer about this, these guys are fighting against Israeli and Romanian funded/trained special forces and m23 is trying to blitz through goma fast I heard
25 comments
Just another day in the bush
Location is central Goma, 26th Jan 2025. All the soldiers in this recording are South African
All bunched up with ammo laying right next to them – one well placed mortar round/drone drop and you get mass casualty event
The South Africans here were attacked in the early hours of the morning by M23 rebels. Safe to say the South Africans gave the rebels an extremely bloody nose, as not only did the rebels fall back after only killing 9 South Africans, but they actively avoided South African bases as they marched to their objective, Goma.
Fpvs and droppers would be great
Whos who is fighting here and how it happened?
Is this an existing conflict or something that kicked off recently? I’ve seen a lot of videos about it this morning
Is it me is the South African military not as good as it was during the Cold War.
M23 are wiping the Floor with Anyone these past few days, Rawanda gave them Heavy weapons and now they are advancing like crazy especially under the cover of darkness
If Goma falls it will be HUGE
Love the guy plugging his ears. Guess he wasn’t supplied ear pro
Shouldn’t they all be firing at the enemy?
[deleted]
I know modern helmets are better, but the PASGT just looks badass.
Don’t know which army is more incompetent than the other.
The rough 66 and 7 they fought the Congo war, with their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore
TL;DR for people who are “wtf is happening here?” :
-The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a mess, and basically has been since independence and tbh will be for the foreseeable future. The government is ineffective and corrupt and their authority does not realistically spread too far from the capital Kinshasa, though there have been efforts (with varying levels of success) to address the significant shortcomings in governance. The only thing a person of authority won’t steal in the Congo is a red-hot stove.
-In the east of DRC, near the lakes, is a region called Kivu, this area in particular is a very messy mess. God does not love Kivu, history is testament to such. The area is cursed with mineral richness. If you’ve ever watched a poverty porn documentary shot in the DRC, you know, the ones where a 5 year old or a mother with 12 children is working for $1 a day to dig up cobalt, that’s likely Kivu.
-In this messy mess is a rebel group called M23 who have been fighting the government and other rebel groups since the early 2010s. These rebels have support from Rwanda (money, weapons, etc.) Broadly speaking, they’re not nice people and basically everyone wishes they would disappear.
-While indeed a rebel group, as in they’re fighting the central government, M23 combines many characteristics of both a terror group and a drug cartel.
-The jewel of Kivu is Goma, the capital. It is a dirty, poor, corrupt, violent, ad-hoc settlement where a lot of the rare-earth minerals in your phone start their global journey. Controlling Goma means you now control that resource hub. Bonus points for Goma, it has the best (relatively speaking for DRC) infrastructure in the region which is quite useful for all manners of smuggling and other things that bad guys do to make their bad guy money.
-Within the last few days M23 has been going balls-to-the-wall to try to get Goma, and according to sources they’re now in the city.
-The South Africans in this video and the others going around as of late are part of a peace keeping force trying to prevent mass killings, mass rape, mass looting, and mass abductions. These unfortunate events are fairly common in the region, but that’s not really the peace keepers fault as they’re (in theory) more-so a backstop for government forces than an actual fighting force themselves.
-Why though is M23 attacking these peacekeepers? Well, sometimes rebels YOLO, but also too if they can endanger the mission then it’s possible that South Africa and other states who sent peacekeepers will pull out their soldiers. This would leave the region open to more exploitation from rebel groups (and quite honestly the government too). But as can be seen from this video and others, M23 isn’t too great at taking on more professional armies (though several peacekeepers have died in combat so far). Also too it’s important to remember that rebel groups like M23 aren’t professional forces, so it could be down to a command/mob level directive to start attacking bases like this rather than a strategic choice from higher up in the M23 ‘leadership’.
Aww man please lord keep these soldiers save and bring our troops back!!
I will say this. African wars are almost always won by the side with better logistics because the competency of the combatants is usually not amazing, logistics in Africa is hard, and if you’re not being supplied then there’s little shame in desertion.
At least these guys look reasonably well supplied. Obviously one pile of mortar rounds and some
Soviet era crates of ammo may not tell the whole story.
imagine if the opposite side used just one mavic and dropped grenades on that mortar ammo cache on which all soldiers are sitting down.
Surprised that noone seems to be speaking english, even the NCO/Officer shouting orders, uses some kind of creole like meshup
What makes this kinda scary is that the South African forces don’t have the equipment nor the funds to fund proper equipment, some soldiers are lucky to be issued with an R5.
Seen a post on conflict observer about this, these guys are fighting against Israeli and Romanian funded/trained special forces and m23 is trying to blitz through goma fast I heard
We should have never left
The one white guy running around.
What a cluster fuck!
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