Thousands of Congolese have fled Goma, fearing lava and deadly gas

THEY GRABBED blankets, clothes and mattresses and rushed out of their houses at dawn on May 27th. In their tens of thousands, they streamed out of the city of Goma, in eastern Congo, terrified of what its volcano might do next. Some fled east towards the border with Rwanda (see map). Others hurried west to the Congolese town of Sake, around 20km away, clogging the dirt road from Goma with motorbikes, cars and pedestrians. Hundreds of people rushed down to Goma’s port to pile onto boats heading to Bukavu, a city at the southern end of Lake Kivu.It was the second mass flight since molten lava began spilling out of a fissure in the side of Mount Nyiragongo on May 22nd. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Goma, where lava flattened districts in the northern outskirts but stopped short of the centre (and just spared the airport). Some 32 people have been killed and around 3,500 houses destroyed. Yet things could get much worse.