Insurgent fighters eye strategic city of Walikale as authorities forces undergo defection amid ongoing combating.
The M23 armed group has pushed deeper into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich area after capturing the important thing cities of Goma and Bukavu – the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces, respectively – in latest weeks.
Safety sources have informed Al Jazeera that the Rwanda-backed rebels had entered Nyabiondo village, about 100km (62 miles) north of Goma and situated on the street resulting in the strategic city of Walikale in North Kivu.
“Walikale is essential for the federal government as it’s the solely place the place the federal government has the commercial mine from which they’re getting thousands and thousands of tax funds,” stated Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani, reporting from Goma.
In a serious setback to authorities forces, one of many authorities’s allied armed teams, often known as the Group Kabido, introduced it had joined fighters from M23. The Group Kabido has been lively in jap DRC for many years, and combating with the military for the final three years. Its leaders introduced this weekend that it’s formally becoming a member of the M23 to struggle what they name the “mismanagement of the Kinshasa authorities”.
“That is exhibiting the disorganisation throughout the DRC military, and the M23 is profiting from this example on the bottom,” Uaykani stated, including {that a} second group defected quickly afterwards.
In the meantime, the United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that escalating assaults have struck hospitals and different civilian infrastructure, displacing tons of of 1000’s of individuals.
“Between March 1 and three, a number of hospitals had been focused by armed actors in an escalation of violence in opposition to medical centres and well being personnel” there, OCHA stated. Safety in Goma is threatened by “a resurgence of felony acts together with burgling of properties, thefts and assaults”, it stated on Sunday, including that hospitals and colleges had additionally been pressured to shut in different areas.
OCHA stated a minimum of 4 civilians had been killed in combating between M23 and rival teams within the Masisi district between February 18 and 25, and greater than 100,000 folks had been newly displaced in Lubero to the north.
$5m reward for seize of M23 insurgent leaders
In the meantime, authorities within the DRC have supplied a $5m reward for assist in arresting insurgent leaders, as authorities forces wrestle to comprise their advance.
“A reward of 5 million {dollars} is obtainable to any one who helps arrest the convicts Corneille Nangaa, Bertrand Bisimwa and Sultani Makenga,” the Ministry of Justice introduced on Friday.
Nangaa is a pacesetter within the Congo River Alliance (AFC) – a military-political coalition to which the M23 belongs. He’s additionally a former president of the DRC’s Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee. Bisimwa and Makenga are the president and army chief of the M23, respectively.
Tried in absentia in Kinshasa, all three males had been convicted and sentenced to loss of life in August 2024.
DRC authorities are additionally providing a bounty of $4m for any data resulting in the arrest of the three males’s “accomplices on the run” and “different sought people”, the assertion stated.
Greater than 7,000 folks have been killed in combating within the jap DRC since January, with a “important” variety of civilians among the many lifeless.
The M23 is likely one of the greater than 200 armed teams working within the jap DRC and vying for management over the area’s minerals. After being dormant for greater than a decade, the group in 2021 resumed combating and seized giant swathes of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda.
In latest weeks, the M23 launched a lightning offensive, capturing Goma and Bukavu. A bunch of UN specialists and america accuse Rwanda of backing the M23 – allegations that Kigali denies.