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Dozens of soldiers from eastern DR Congo fled to Rwanda on Monday, January 27, after M23 rebels captured the border city of Goma.
The Congolese soldiers, who crossed into Rwanda through the Grande Barriere border post in Rubavu District, were disarmed by Rwandan defence and security forces.
The M23 rebels have been fighting the Congolese army since late 2021. In recent weeks, they surrounded Goma, the capital city of North Kivu Province, whose military governor Peter Cirimwami was killed on Thursday on the battlefield.
On Sunday, the rebels closed
airspace over the besieged city and suspended all activities on Lake Kivu.
The rebels took control of the city home to about two million people after a 48-hour ultimatum they had given to the Congolese government coalition elapsed on the night of Sunday.
Members of the Congolese armed forces surrendered to the rebels and handed over their weapons to MONUSCO, the UN mission in the conflict-ridden country.
The conflict has affected the relations between Rwanda and DR Congo, which accuses its neighbour of supporting the rebels. Rwanda dismisses these accusations, laying out its security concerns about the collaboration between the Congolese army and the FDLR, a UN-sanctioned terrorist group founded by perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. DR Congo closed its embassy in Kigali on Friday.
The crisis in eastern DR Congo has prompted Kenyan President William Ruto, who chairs the East African Community, to call for an extraordinary summit of heads of state to deliberate on the situation.
Ruto, who spoke to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Congolese leader Felix Tshisekedi, urged called for a return to the Luanda process, the Angola-mediated initiative, which collapsed in mid-December after the Congolese government turn down the proposal to have direct peace talks with the rebels.
“The escalating deteriorating peace and security situation in the DRC is of grave concern,” Ruto said on Sunday, adding the EAC leaders would meet in the next 48 hours.
The UN Security Council held a briefing on Sunday, in which the Rwanda envoy in New York said “current crisis could have been averted had the DRC government demonstrated, a genuine commitment to peace,” instead of pursuing a military solution to a long-standing problem, whose root causes have been ignored.
Amb. Ernest Rwamucyo accused the Congolese government of “complete mismanagement of the complex problem” in eastern DR Congo.
Rwamucyo said the current situation mirrored the crisis of 2012 and 2013, when the M23 took control of Goma and was later defeated, with its fighters forced to flee in neighbouring countries. The rebel group resurfaced in November 2021, accusing the government of ignoring peace agreements which would see them disarmed and the security of persecuted Congolese communities guaranteed.
