(Reuters) -The United Nations expressed deep concern at reports of M23 rebels and Rwandan troops advancing south towards the Congolese city of Bukavu on Thursday, as the militants sought also to assert their control over east Congo’s largest city Goma.
The Rwandan-backed insurgents’ seizure of Goma this week and ongoing offensive southwards are the biggest escalation since 2012 of a decades-old conflict the U.N. says risks spiralling into another major regional war.
A sustained and successful push by M23 into the neighbouring province of South Kivu would see them control territory previous rebellions have not taken since the end of two major wars that ran from 1996 to 2003, in which millions of civilians died, mostly from malnutrition and disease.
The absence of U.N. peacekeepers in South Kivu heightens the humanitarian and security risks of an escalation in fighting there, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
He added that there were reports of Rwandan forces crossing the border in the direction of South Kivu’s capital Bukavu. The Rwandan authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Troops from neighbouring Burundi, which has had hostile relations with Rwanda, support Congolese troops in South Kivu – meaning the risk of a wider conflict would increase. Burundi’s military declined to comment on the situation in Congo.
Rwanda says it is defending itself, accusing Congo’s military of joining forces with ethnic Hutu-led militias bent on slaughtering Tutsis in Congo and threatening Rwanda, where Hutus targeted Tutsis in a 1994 genocide and some later fled to Congo.
Congo denies this and accuses Rwanda of using M23, which it describes as a “terrorist proxy of Rwanda”, to pillage valuable minerals from Congolese territory. U.N. experts have documented the export of large quantities of looted minerals via Rwanda.
An international backlash against Rwanda, which has included Germany cancelling aid talks and Britain threatening to withhold 32 million pounds ($40 million) of annual bilateral assistance, was having no apparent effect on the ground.
Advancing along Lake Kivu, M23 fighters were pushed back on Wednesday from the town of Nyabibwe, some 50 km (30 miles) from Bukavu, and were clashing on Thursday with Congolese troops in the nearby location of Kahalala, according to two local sources.
“The Congolese army seems to be putting up fierce resistance there,” said one of the sources, from a civil society organisation in Bukavu.
FOOD STORES LOOTED
In Goma itself, M23 were presenting themselves as the city’s new administrators.
“We are asking all Goma residents to go back to normal activities,” Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance rebel coalition that includes M23, told reporters.
The situation in the city was far from normal, however. The streets, strewn with debris and discarded military fatigues, were mostly deserted as heavily armed M23 fighters in pick-up trucks patrolled them.
The World Health Organization said over 2,000 people had been wounded by recent fighting in and around Goma with at least 45 deaths registered so far, citing reports.
“The security situation seems to be stabilising, although there are still reports of skirmishes in some parts of town,” said Doctors Without Borders (MSF) programme manager Natalia Torrent.
Rebel leader Nangaa said the M23 was not going anywhere. “We are here in Goma to stay. “We are going to continue the march until Kinshasa,” he said, referring to Congo’s capital more than 1,600 km away.
The violence has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee multiple times. Displacement camps around Goma that were hosting around 800,000 people are emptying out, World Food Programme official Cynthia Jones said.
FIGHTING TALK FROM PRESIDENTS
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday described the crisis as a “very serious problem,” but declined to say whether the United States had a peace plan.
Thursday saw a flurry of diplomatic activity, including a meeting of East African heads of state and a visit to Kinshasa and Kigali by France’s foreign minister.
Nevertheless, both Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame made uncompromising statements.
Tshisekedi said in an address to the nation that Congo’s army would “reconquer every inch of our territory” and accused Rwanda and its “M23 puppets” of “a terrorist enterprise on our soil, sowing terror and desolation among our population”.
Kagame has long lambasted Tshisekedi for what he describes as Congo’s harbouring of Hutu “genocidaires”.
He also lashed out at South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa for saying in a post on X that the fighting in Congo, in which 13 South African soldiers have died since last week, was due to an escalation by the M23 and the Rwandan army.
Kagame accused South African forces of working alongside a militia in Congo with ties to perpetrators of the 1994 genocide and “threatening to take the war to Rwanda itself”.
“If South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day,” Kagame wrote.
Since the fall of Goma, Rwanda has also reacted angrily to calls for restraint from Western nations, accusing its critics of “victim-blaming” and turning a blind eye to what it says is Congo’s complicity in the slaughter of Tutsis.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Estelle Shirbon, Hereward Holland and Aaron Ross; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Alison Williams and Daniel Wallis)
