On the Ground in the Congo

"The country is no more," a Congolese man tells Le Monde. His town was looted by government soldiers fleeing rebels from the National Congress for the Defense of the People. The hospital he works at is in complete disarray. The doctors have fled, there is no electricity, and soldiers have pilfered the medicine. Only a handful of nurses remain to combat new cases of cholera that could spread into an epidemic. Outside the hospital, fear and outrage have taken hold of the population. "Soldiers came into my home," says an old man at the hospital. "All I had left were my turkeys. They took them, and now they're feasting as people are dying."