The smoldering lava from the Mount Nyiragongo eruption is seen in Goma. - AFP

GOMA: Powerful aftershocks from the Mount Nyiragongo volcano rocked the eastern DR Congo city of Goma yesterday as the death toll from the disaster climbed to 32 and thousands were feared homeless. Three days after Africa's most active volcano roared back into life, spewing lava that reached the outskirts of the city of 1.5 million, tremors were shaking the region every 10 to 15 minutes.

And two major cracks, stretching up to several hundred metres (yards) long and dozens of centimeters (roughly two feet) wide in places in some places, opened up near the city's main hospital and on a major highway near the airport, worrying residents who have only just returned home after Saturday's eruption. "We don't know what to do-we're in a quandary, there's no instructions from the authorities, even though everything is moving," said local resident Furaha Nyirere, visibly anxious.

A three-storey building partially collapsed under the repeated strain of the aftershocks, seriously injuring at least seven people, police said. "We are all living in fear of a fresh eruption," a local official from an international organization told AFP. "The aftershocks are very intense. A lot of people slept outside under mosquito nets, scared that their homes were going to collapse. There are cracks in the walls of our office," the official said.

Across the nearby border, the Rwanda Seismic Monitor said it had detected a 5.3 magnitude earthquake in the region at 0903 GMT, as well as a 4.6 magnitude tremor an hour earlier. Goma, a city on the shores of Lake Kivu, lies just 12 kilometers (about seven miles) from Mount Nyiragongo. Tens of thousands of residents fled in panic, many of them to Rwanda, when the much-dreaded volcano began erupting on Saturday evening. Two rivers of molten rock flowed from the volcano at a height of 1,800 meters (5,900 feet). One headed towards Goma, stopping at the very outskirts of the city.

Fears of fresh eruption

It engulfed homes in its wake, smothering the surrounding area with suffocating gas and cutting off the road between Goma and Butembo, the main highway in North Kivu province. "Thirty-two people died in incidents linked to the eruption, including seven people killed by lava and five asphyxiated by gases," the UN refugee agency UNHCR said in Geneva. "The lava flow stopped on Sunday, but there have been repeated earthquakes since the eruption and the lava lake in the volcano's crater appears to have refilled, prompting fears of new fissures opening or another eruption."

The previous toll, drawn from NGOs and other sources, was 20. Five people died from suffocation on Monday after they tried to cross the cooling lava some 13 kilometers north of Goma, civil society leader Mambo Kawaya said. A so-called strato-volcano nearly early 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed around 100 lives. - AFP