(Reuters) – Rwanda has agreed to allow troops deployed by the Southern Africa bloc to fight rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to evacuate from the rebel-held city of Goma through its territory to Tanzania, three diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) said in mid-March it had terminated the mandate and would begin a phased withdrawal of its force, known as SAMIDRC, from Congo.
The three diplomats, with knowledge of the ongoing talks between Rwanda and SADC, confirmed that Rwanda had accepted a request for the force’s troops to pass through the country by land.
Two of the diplomats added that they have been informed that the regional force’s weapons will be sealed for security reasons but will leave Rwandan territory with the troops.
There was no immediate response from SADC nor from spokespeople for the Congolese and Rwandan governments when asked for comment.
General Rudzani Maphwanya, the head of the South African National Defence Force, said on South African Broadcasting Corporation television on Thursday that a technical team was in Tanzania working on the finer details of their troop withdrawal.
SAMIDRC was sent to assist Kinshasa’s fight against rebel groups in Congo’s war-ravaged eastern borderlands in December 2023.
M23 have seized east Congo’s two biggest cities since January in an escalation of a long-running conflict rooted in the spillover into Congo of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and the struggle for control of Congo’s vast mineral resources.
(Reporting by Sonia Rolley in Paris and Nairobi Newsroom; Writing by Hereward Holland and George Obulutsa; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
