Eleven years after an eruption of Mount Nyiragongo devastated the sprawling lakeside city of Goma, killing hundreds of people, eastern Congo's armed conflict is preventing scientists from predicting the volcano's next deadly explosion.
With its plume of ash and steam reaching high into the sky, the brooding Nyiragongo is one of the world's most active volcanoes and a constant menace to the city of 1 million people, whose streets are still scarred by solidified lava.
Attempts to monitor the volcano's activity have been dangerously curtailed by the M23 rebel group which has controlled its lush, forested slopes for the past year.
Observation equipment has been looted by armed groups and the area around Nyiragongo is off-limits as rebel fighters defend their strategic positions overlooking Goma.
"What happened in 2002 will happen again. We just don't know when," Celestin Kasereka Mahinda, a volcanologist at the Goma observatory and head of a national committee charged with planning for natural disasters.
Kasereka and his colleagues gave two months' warning before the last eruption but authorities ignored them. People only began to evacuate as the first fingers of lava probed their way into the town's densely populated residential areas.
Goma's airport is still surrounded by lava blocs as big as cars, excavated after the runway was swallowed by molten rock.
Kasereka used to conduct weekly checks on Nyiragongo, one of only three volcanoes in the world to have a permanent lava lake.
"Surveillance is very reduced so the risk has become very big," he said. "The situation is a bit ridiculous."
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