Rwanda-backed M23 militia rapidly advanced towards the strategic city of Uvira, with tens of thousands of people fleeing over the nearby border into Burundi, sources said.
The armed group and its Rwandan allies were just a few kilometres (miles) north of Uvira, security and military sources told AFP.
The renewed violence undermined a peace agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump that Kinshasa and Kigali signed less than a week ago, on December 4.
Trump had boasted that the Rwanda-DRC conflict was one of eight he has ended since returning to power in America in January.
With the new fighting, more than 30,000 people have fled the area around Uvira for Burundi in the space of a week, a UN source and a Burundian administrative source told AFP.
The Burundian source told AFP on condition of anonymity he had recorded more than 8,000 daily arrivals over the past two days, and 30,000 arrivals in one week. A source in the UN refugee agency confirmed the figure.
The Rwanda-backed M23 offensive comes nearly a year after the group seized control of Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in eastern DRC, a strategic region rich in natural resources and plagued by conflict for 30 years.
Local people described a state of growing panic as bombardments struck the hills above Uvira, a city of several hundred thousand residents.
“Three bombs have just exploded in the hills. It’s every man for himself,” said one resident reached by telephone.
“We are all under the beds in Uvira — that’s the reality,” another resident said, while a representative of civil society who would not give their name described fighting on the city’s outskirts.
Fighting was also reported in Runingo, another small locality some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Uvira, as the M23 and the Rwandan army closed in.
Burundi views the prospect of Uvira falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat, given that it sits across Lake Tanganyika from Burundi’s economic capital Bujumbura.
The city is the main sizeable locality in the area yet to fall to the M23 and its capture would essentially cut off the zone from DRC control.
Burundi deployed about 10,000 soldiers to eastern DRC in October 2023 as part of a military cooperation agreement, and security sources say reinforcements have since taken that presence to around 18,000 men.
The M23 and Rwandan forces launched their Uvira offensive on December 1.
Rich in natural resources, eastern DRC has been choked by successive conflicts for around three decades.
Violence in the region intensified early this year when M23 fighters seized the key eastern city of Goma in January, followed by Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, a few weeks later.
The peace deal meant to quell the fighting was signed last Thursday in Washington by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, with Trump — who called it a “miracle” deal — also putting his signature to it.
The agreement includes an economic component intended to secure US supplies of critical minerals present in the region, as America seeks to challenge China’s dominance in the sector. (Guardian)
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