DR Congo: New army battles with M23 – Tension with Rwanda rises again

Fighting resumed on Monday in eastern DR Congo between the army and M23 rebels, after four days of fighting that left at least ten dead and dozens injured, while tensions with Rwanda escalated, with Kinshasa and Kigali exchanging accusations.

The DR Congo government accuses Rwanda of actively supporting M23, which the latter denies.

“Contrary to the statements of the president of the DR Congo (s.s. who assures) that his country is committed to the diplomatic resolution of the conflict (…) recent statements and actions” show that Kinshasa has chosen “the path of continuous military escalation,” Rwandan authorities said in a press release they released.

“Since September 20, with its usual strategy of brutality, M23”, in cooperation “with Rwanda”, attacked Congolese army positions, “again causing needless deaths and displacing thousands” of civilians, countered for its part the Patrick Muyaya, the Congolese Minister of Communications and government spokesman. “We had to react,” he added.

An official casualty tally released Sunday evening by the DR Congo army said four civilians were killed and 40 wounded in the fighting since Thursday in the Rutsuru area (North Kivu province), after a period of relative calm lasting a few weeks.

Yesterday morning, a resident of Damugenga, Jean-Baptiste Mapedo, who spoke to AFP by phone from Goma, the capital of North Kivu, spoke of seven dead civilians being buried, then, in the evening, he said the dead reached their ten.

The day before Sunday, the village’s community leader said it was taken over by members of M23 (“March 23 Movement”), a Tutsi-dominated rebel group that took up arms again in late 2021, accusing Kinshasa of violating the terms of an earlier peace agreement, especially for the reintegration of its combatants.

After resuming armed action, M23 seized territory in North Kivu, in particular, in June, the town of Bunagana, on the border with Uganda.

Initiatives

“Population remains locked in the Damugenga health center, schools, churches and the monastery,” said Gideon Serugari, an official in the area where the village falls, some 4 kilometers from a strategic road.

The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières, MSF) reported last Sunday that 500 people, including the wounded, took refuge in a monastery in Damugenga, calling for a humanitarian corridor to be created so that civilians could be safely evacuated.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 23,000 people were forced to flee their homes after fighting resumed on October 20, including about 2,500 who crossed the border into Uganda.

Since March, “the fighting has displaced at least 186,000 people, bringing the total number of displaced people in Ruchuru to over 396,000,” according to the same source.

“We call on all armed groups to respect international humanitarian law” and allow aid organizations “access to the people most in need,” Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said in New York.

Congolese government representative Muyaya referred to diplomatic initiatives from Nairobi, Luanda as well as on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York by French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with the presidents of DR Congo Felix Tshisekendi and Rwandan Paul Kagami, to restore peace.

He also referred to the head of state’s recent visit to London, recalled that he met with King Charles III, added that the two men “agreed that there is a need to combine efforts” and the new monarch “promised to be involved in order to apply sufficient pressure in Rwanda to stop all these killings in the eastern part of DR Congo.”

RES-EMP

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