The M23 rebel group has declared the key city of Goma under its control, signalling a big blow to the Congolese army.
Fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) city of Goma has intensified as the military continues to hold off the M23 forces.
On Monday, rebels, which the United Nations says are backed by Rwanda, marched into Goma and declared the key city under their control, signalling a big blow to the Congolese army and a serious escalation in the years-long conflict that has killed hundreds and displaced millions in the eastern DRC.
DRC’s Rural Development Minister Muhindo Nzangi said the Congolese army controlled 80 percent of Goma, with Rwandan troops either on the city’s outskirts or back across the border.
At least 17 people were killed in Goma on Monday, and the AFP news agency reported quoting hospital sources that doctors in the city were treating 367 people wounded in the clashes.
Civil society members and NGOs working in Goma put the death toll at 25, with 375 people injured.
“Our surgical teams are now working around the clock to cope with the massive influx of wounded,” Myriam Favier, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in North Kivu province, told AFP.
On Tuesday, South Africa confirmed three of its soldiers had died in the fighting on Monday after getting “caught in the crossfire”. It added that another soldier killed in the recent fighting had also died on Monday.
Fire exchanges also took place between Congolese and Rwandan troops on either side of a border crossing near Goma.
Five civilians were killed and 25 seriously wounded on the outskirts of Rwandan border town Gisenyi, Rwanda’s military told AFP on Monday.
“Residents told us they had successfully taken back part of the city centre,” said Al Jazeera’s Malcolm Webb, reporting from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
Greg Ramm, country director for Save the Children in DRC, told an online briefing on Tuesday that while “we have reports that neighbourhoods are calm, a few minutes later, we hear reports of new shelling”.
The DRC government said it “continues to work to avoid carnage and the loss of human life” in Goma, according to spokesperson Patrick Muyaya.
One Goma resident told the Reuters news agency that he had seen men in Rwandan army uniforms on Monday.
“In the evening, I went out to see what the situation was. I saw soldiers dressed in brand new Rwandan uniforms,” the resident of central Goma said.
M23, or the March 23 Movement, is one of hundreds of armed groups operating in the eastern DRC and seeking to control critical mineral mines.
The group is composed of Tutsi fighters and claims it is fighting for the rights of the DRC’s minority Tutsi population. It emerged in 2012 after a group from the armed forces of the DRC (FARDC) broke away, complaining of ill-treatment.
In 2012, M23 first seized Goma, but the Congolese army, supported by the UN forces, pushed the rebels back into the eastern hills on the border with Rwanda in 2013.
The DRC government and the UN accuse Rwanda, under President Paul Kagame, of supporting M23 with soldiers and weapons in a bid to control the mineral-rich eastern DRC.
“There’s no question that there are Rwandan troops in Goma supporting the M23,” UN peacekeeping forces’ chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters at the same livestreamed event. “It’s difficult to tell exactly what the numbers are.”
Rwanda has denied the charge and accused the DRC of harbouring members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an anti-Kagame rebel group that was involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
As the fighting escalates, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council will hold a meeting later on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.
The UN Security Council will also meet on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.
