DR Congo conflict risks broader regional war, Burundi warns

The conflict in eastern DR Congo risks escalating into a broader regional war, Burundi’s president said Saturday, as Africa’s top health agency warned the fighting could spark new outbreaks of serious diseases.

The Rwanda-backed armed group M23 has vowed to march on the capital Kinshasa after capturing eastern DR Congo’s biggest city of Goma earlier this week.

The lightning offensive is the latest to scar the mineral-rich region, which has seen relentless conflict involving dozens of armed groups kill an estimated six million people over three decades.

The fall of Goma has rattled the continent, prompting international condemnation, fears of a humanitarian crisis and warnings that the conflict could spiral into a wider conflagration affecting more countries.

“If it continues like this, war risks becoming widespread in the region,” Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye said.

“It is not only Burundi, it is Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya — it is the whole region, it is a threat,” he said in an official video posted to YouTube on Saturday.

Illustrating the complicated nature of the conflict, Burundi itself has at least 10,000 soldiers in the east of DR Congo, a Burundian military source told AFP on Saturday.

Many of the Burundian troops, who are there under a previous military agreement with Kinshasa, have been redeployed to South Kivu provincial capital Bukavu.

Uganda’s army will meanwhile adopt a “forward defensive posture” in eastern DRC, it said on Friday.

A UN expert report in July said Rwanda had around 4,000 troops in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo, accusing Kigali of having “de facto” control over the M23.

Rwanda denies any military involvement, maintaining its goal in eastern DRC is to eradicate a Hutu-led armed group formed in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

DR Congo accuses Rwanda of seeking to profit from the region’s rare minerals, which are used in technology such as smartphones across the world — a claim Rwanda also denies.

– ‘Pandemics’ warning –

Since M23 and Rwandan troops entered South Kivu province’s capital Goma on Sunday, at least 700 people have been killed and another 2,800 wounded in intense clashes, according to the United Nations.

The M23 have outmatched the ill-equipped and poorly paid Congolese forces, which have resorted to hastily recruiting volunteers to fight back.

In recent days, M23 fighters have advanced into the neighbouring South Kivu province towards the town of Kavumu.

The town has a strategic military airport and is where the Congolese forces have established their main line of defence.

The fighting in Goma has sparked a “full-scale public health emergency,” the African Union’s public health agency said.

Even before the latest violence, “extreme conditions, combined with insecurity and mass displacement have fuelled the mutation of the mpox virus,” Africa CDC head Jean Kaseya said.

The deadly clade 1b variant of mpox, which has been recorded in countries around the world in recent months, first emerged in South Kivu in 2023.

“If decisive action is not taken, it will not be bullets alone that claim lives -– it will be the unchecked spread of major outbreaks and potential pandemics,” Kaseya added.

– Markets open in Goma –

While the fighting has largely stopped in Goma, AFP reporters said there are still serious shortages of cash and fuel, with the Congolese authorities reluctant to prioritise supplying the city largely under M23’s control.

In the areas it has seized, the armed group has started setting up parallel administration and loyal officials.

Markets opened in central Goma on Saturday, with traders setting up stalls and women carrying bundles of cassava leaves on their shoulders.

Multiple diplomatic efforts have emerged aiming to prevent the crisis from escalating.

On Friday, southern African leaders pledged “unwavering” support to DR Congo after holding an emergency summit in Zimbabwe.

In a region already home to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, the latest fighting has forced another 500,000 people form their homes, according to the UN, which has also warned of rape and summary executions during the violence.