Rwandan-backed armed group M23 has seized Goma, the biggest city in the country's east, and is advancing south as volunteers and the struggling Congolese army attempt to beat them back.
Image: ALEXIS HUGUET / AFP
Rwandan-backed armed group M23 announced a humanitarian "ceasefire" from Tuesday in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) perennially explosive east, days before a planned crisis meeting between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
Last week, the M23 and Rwandan troops seized Goma - the provincial capital of North Kivu, a mineral-rich region that has been blighted by war for over three decades.
Fighting has stopped in the city of more than a million, but clashes have spread to the neighbouring province of South Kivu, raising fears of an M23 advance to its capital Bukavu.
A political-military coalition of groups called the Alliance Fleuve Congo (River Congo Alliance), of which M23 is a member, said in a statement late Monday that it would implement "a ceasefire" from the next day "for humanitarian reasons".
It added that it had "no intention of taking control of Bukavu or other localities", despite the M23 having said last week that it wanted to "continue the march" to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.
In more than three years of fighting, half a dozen ceasefires and truces have been declared, before being systematically broken.
The Kenyan presidency announced on Monday that Tshisekedi and Kagame would attend a joint extraordinary summit of the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam on Saturday.
Amid fears of a regional conflagration, the 16 member countries of the southern African regional organisation had called on Friday for "a joint summit" with the eight countries of the East African Community, of which Rwanda is a member.
According to a local source in Bukavu interviewed by AFP, the city "remains calm for the moment" but information suggests the M23 was "reorganising itself with troop reinforcements and weapons to go to the front now that fighting has ceased in Goma".
In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa vowed on Monday to continue providing support to the DRC in the face of nationwide calls to withdraw Pretoria's troops following the deaths of 14 South African soldiers.
Most of those killed were part of an armed force sent to the eastern DRC in 2023 by the SADC bloc.
"A ceasefire is a necessary precondition for peace talks that must include all parties to the conflict whether they are state or non-state actors, Congolese or non-Congolese," Ramaphosa said.
"Diplomacy is the most sustainable pathway to achieving a lasting peace for the DRC and its people."
Amid an ongoing war of words between Ramaphosa and Kagame, Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo reacted strongly to the South African leader's statement.
"You are sending your troops to fight Tshisekedi's war to kill his own people," she said to Ramaphosa on X.
Kagame has said that South African troops have no place in eastern DRC and are a "belligerent force engaging in offensive combat operations to help the DRC government fight against its own people".
A UN expert report said last year that Rwanda had up to 4,000 troops in the DRC, seeking to profit from the mining of minerals - and that Kigali has "de facto" control over the M23.
Eastern DRC has deposits of coltan, the metallic ore that is vital in making phones and laptops, as well as gold and other minerals.
Rwanda has never admitted to military involvement in support of the M23 group and alleges that the DRC supports and shelters the FDLR, an armed group created by ethnic Hutus who massacred Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
South Africa dominates the SADC force, which is estimated to number around 1,300 troops, but Malawi and Tanzania also contribute soldiers.
The US announced on Monday it was further reducing its staff at its embassy in Kinshasa.
AFP