Fighting flares in east DR Congo despite Rwanda truce push

Congolese refugees fleeing ongoing clashes in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo carry their belongings as they arrive at the Rugerero transit camp in Gisenyi on January 28, 2025. [AFP]

Fierce fighting between the Congolese army and the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has flared up again in the Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled east despite truce talks between the two neighbours.

The DRC and Rwanda agreed at talks in the United States on Friday to reach a draft peace deal by May 2, raising hopes of ending the crisis sparked by the M23's lightning offensive.

Though mutual suspicion lingered, both countries committed to respecting each other's sovereignty and to cease supporting rebel movements.

But over the weekend, fresh clashes erupted along several fronts in the eastern DRC, a mineral-rich region plagued by violence and ethnic tensions for more than three decades, local and security sources told AFP on Monday.

The fighting has taken place in South Kivu, where the front line has stabilised around the Ruzizi plains and the regions to its west since February, when the M23 seized the provincial capital, Bukavu.

Residents of the town of Kaziba, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Bukavu, have taken flight in the face of fighting between the M23 and the Congolese army, according to the sources.

The M23 is fighting alongside Rwandan soldiers while the DRC's forces have Burundian troops and local pro-government militias as backup, the sources added.

"Seventy per cent of the population has left Kaziba, the houses are empty," a civil society figure in Kaziba told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

From Monday morning, the M23 was locked in intense skirmishes with pro-Congolese militia fighters in Kalehe territory, in the north of South Kivu, again according to local and security sources.

"Loud detonations and shots by heavy and light weaponry" led to significant numbers of people fleeing the fighting, a Kalehe civil society representative told AFP.

No toll from the weekend's clashes was yet possible to establish.

Since its 2021 resurgence, the M23 has seized swathes of the eastern DRC, displacing hundreds of thousands of Congolese and triggering a widespread humanitarian crisis.

More than half a dozen truces and ceasefires have been brokered before being broken in short order since the end of 2021.

The eastern DRC is riven by a rash of armed groups, which are sometimes used as proxy forces by the Congolese government and the country's neighbours.