Insurgent fighters eye strategic city of Walikale as authorities forces undergo defection amid ongoing preventing.
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 current weeks.
Safety sources have instructed Al Jazeera that the Rwanda-backed rebels had entered Nyabiondo village, about 100km (62 miles) north of Goma and positioned on the highway 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 economic mine from which they’re getting tens of millions of tax funds,” mentioned Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani, reporting from Goma.
In a significant setback to authorities forces, one of many authorities’s allied armed teams, generally 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 preventing with the military for the final three years. Its leaders introduced this weekend that it’s formally becoming a member of the M23 to battle what they name the “mismanagement of the Kinshasa authorities”.
“That is displaying the disorganisation throughout the DRC military, and the M23 is benefiting from this example on the bottom,” Uaykani mentioned, including {that a} second group defected quickly afterwards.
In the meantime, the United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) mentioned that escalating assaults have struck hospitals and different civilian infrastructure, displacing lots of of 1000’s of individuals.
“Between March 1 and three, a number of hospitals have been focused by armed actors in an escalation of violence towards medical centres and well being personnel” there, OCHA mentioned. Safety in Goma is threatened by “a resurgence of felony acts together with burgling of houses, thefts and assaults”, it mentioned on Sunday, including that hospitals and faculties had additionally been compelled to shut in different areas.
OCHA mentioned at the very least 4 civilians have been killed in preventing between M23 and rival teams within the Masisi district between February 18 and 25, and greater than 100,000 folks have been newly displaced in Lubero to the north.
$5m reward for seize of M23 insurgent leaders
In the meantime, authorities within the DRC have provided a $5m reward for assist in arresting insurgent leaders, as authorities forces battle to include their advance.
“A reward of 5 million {dollars} is obtainable to any one that helps arrest the convicts Corneille Nangaa, Bertrand Bisimwa and Sultani Makenga,” the Ministry of Justice introduced on Friday.
Nangaa is a frontrunner 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 Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee. Bisimwa and Makenga are the president and army chief of the M23, respectively.
Tried in absentia in Kinshasa, all three males have been convicted and sentenced to dying in August 2024.
DRC authorities are additionally providing a bounty of $4m for any info resulting in the arrest of the three males’s “accomplices on the run” and “different sought people”, the assertion mentioned.
Greater than 7,000 folks have been killed in preventing within the jap DRC since January, with a “important” variety of civilians among the many lifeless.
The M23 is without doubt 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 preventing and seized massive swathes of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda.
In current weeks, the M23 launched a lightning offensive, capturing Goma and Bukavu. A bunch of UN specialists and the USA accuse Rwanda of backing the M23 – allegations that Kigali denies.