Population

Year	Inhabitants
1994
2004	(est.)

Sake is a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

 in the eastern province of North Kivu. It is located at the northwestern extremity of Lake Kivu

Lake Kivu

Lake Kivu is one of the African Great Lakes. It lies on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and is in the Albertine Rift, a part of the Great Rift Valley. Lake Kivu empties into the Ruzizi River, which flows southwards into Lake Tanganyika...

, 25 km (15 mi) west-northwest of Goma

Goma

Goma is a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, next to the Rwandan city of Gisenyi. The lake and the two cities are in the western branch of the Great Rift Valley, and Goma lies only 13 to 18 km due south of the crater of the active...

 on National Road No. 2

National Road No. 2

National Road No. 2 is a 863-km road in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It runs from the eastern city of Goma, which lies on the northern shore of Lake Kivu across the border from the Rwandan city of Gisenyi, around the western shore of Lake Kivu via Katana towards Bukavu...

, at the edge of the volcanic lava

Lava

Lava refers both to molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption and the resulting rock after solidification and cooling. This molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at...

 plains in the bottom of the Great Rift Valley

Great Rift Valley

The Great Rift Valley is a name given in the late 19th century by British explorer John Walter Gregory to the continuous geographic trench, approximately in length, that runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in South East Africa...

, western branch, at an elevation of about 1500 m. The western escarpment

Escarpment

An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.-Description and variants:...

 of the rift valley rises to 800 m above Sake.

The lava comes from the volcano

Volcano

2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...

es Nyamuragira and Nyiragongo, 25 km northwest, and numerous smaller volcanic cone

Volcanic cone

Volcanic cones are among the simplest volcanic formations. They are built by ejecta from a volcanic vent, piling up around the vent in the shape of a cone with a central crater. Volcanic cones are of different types, depending upon the nature and size of the fragments ejected during the eruption...

s which are fed by fissure

Fissure

In anatomy, a fissure is a groove, natural division, deep furrow, elongated cleft, or tear in various parts of the body.-Brain:...

s from these volcanoes. A number of cones can be seen in satellite photographs 7–8 km east of Sake. They also show that lava flows in recent years have covered parts of the road to Goma (National Road No. 2) and have reached the lake, cutting off the bay in which Sake is located, to form a small lake of less than 1 square km. The adjacent bay, which is about 40 km² in size, has almost been cut off by the lava and only a 160 m wide channel remains to connect it to the main body of Lake Kivu.

Sake has hosted Rwanda

Rwanda

Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

ns during the Great Lakes refugee crisis

Great Lakes refugee crisis

The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide...

 of the mid-1990s and Goma residents fleeing the 2002 eruption of Mount Nyiragongo

Mount Nyiragongo

Mount Nyiragongo is a stratovolcano in the Virunga Mountains associated with the Great Rift Valley. It is located inside Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 20 km north of the town of Goma and Lake Kivu and just west of the border with Rwanda. The main crater...

. Deadly battles between the government military and forces led by Laurent Nkunda

Laurent Nkunda

Laurent Nkunda or Laurent Nkundabatware, or Laurent Nkunda Batware, or as he prefers to be called The Chairman — is a former General in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo and is the former warlord operating in the province of Nord-Kivu, sympathetic to Congolese Tutsis and the...

 led thousands of residents of Sake to flee in August 2006. On 25 November 2006, fifteen to twenty thousands fled battles between Nkunda forces and the DRC army in an offensive waged by the former in the area of Sake. The fighting took place nearly a day before the Supreme Court was to rule on the outcome of the highly contested 2006 presidential run-off

Democratic Republic of the Congo general election, 2006

General elections were held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on July 30, 2006, the first multiparty elections in the country in 41 years. Voters went to the polls to elect both a new President of the Republic and a new National Assembly, the lower-house of the Parliament.The polls were...

. The fighting appear to have dissipated the following morning.