Key DR Congo city close to falling to Rwanda-backed fighters

Rwanda-backed fighters controlled most of the besieged DR Congo city of Goma on Wednesday as residents slowly emerged from their homes after days of deadly fighting in the key mineral trading hub.

The M23 armed group and Rwandan troops have seized the airport and most of the centre and neighbourhoods since marching into the eastern provincial capital on Sunday after a lightning offensive.

The intense fighting has heightened a humanitarian crisis in a turbulent region plagued for decades by armed groups backed by regional rivals in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold that are used in producing smartphones and other electronic devices.

Kenya has announced a crisis meeting between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on Wednesday, but neither side has confirmed the talks.

Three days of clashes have left more than 100 dead and nearly 1,000 wounded in overflowing hospitals, according to an AFP tally from the city’s overflowing hospitals.

One medic told AFP that many bodies were still to be recovered in the city of one million people wedged between Lake Kivu and the Rwandan border.

After fighting eased on Tuesday, only M23 fighters and Rwandan forces were visible on the streets, reinforcing the impression that Goma was about to fall.

Many Congolese soldiers were seen fleeing, while others shed their uniforms to avoid being caught.

The M23 seized Goma airport on Tuesday, a security source said, and also has the North Kivu province’s government headquarters.

The M23 initially claimed it had taken Goma on Sunday, but it has since been unclear how much of the city it controlled. Senior M23 officials told the media they would make a statement on Wednesday.

After days trapped inside homes without electricity, people started emerging Wednesday. Some swam in Lake Kivu as sporadic gunshots echoed in the distance.

“It was a bit frightening with the gunshots we were hearing,” student Merdi Kambelenge told AFP.

“But, as far as we could tell, it has already stabilised despite the fact that there’s no power… we’re cut off from the world.”

– World urged to act –

Before the M23 started its march on Goma last month, Angola-mediated talks between DRC and Rwanda were called off at the last minute when Kagame failed to turn up.

More than 500,000 people have been forced from their homes since the start of the year, the United Nations said, warning of food shortages, looted aid, overwhelmed hospitals and the potential spread of disease.

On Tuesday, protesters in the capital Kinshasa attacked the embassies of various nations they accused of not stepping in to halt the chaos in the east.

The UN, United States, China and the European Union have all called on Rwanda to withdraw its forces from the region.

In a call with Kagame on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio “urged an immediate ceasefire in the region, and for all parties to respect sovereign territorial integrity”.

Kagame said on X he had a “productive conversation” with Rubio about “the need to ensure a ceasefire in Eastern DRC”.

At a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, DRC Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner called on countries “to have the courage to do what is right.”

– ‘Blood minerals’ –

The DRC has accused Rwanda of waging the offensive to profit from the region’s abundant minerals — a claim backed by UN experts who say Kigali has thousands of troops in DRC and “de facto control” over M23.

Rwanda has denied the accusations.

Kagame has never admitted military involvement, saying Rwanda’s aim is to tackle an armed group, the FDLR, created by former Hutu leaders who massacred Tutsis during the genocide.

The UN’s mission in DRC warned that the fighting risked reigniting ethnic conflicts dating back to the 1994 mass bloodletting.

“At least one case of ethnically motivated lynching” has been documented in a camp for displaced in Goma, the mission’s Vivian van de Perre said on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are in camps around Goma.

At least 17 peacekeepers from a southern African regional force and the UN’s DR Congo mission have been killed in the fighting.

The Tutsi-led M23 briefly occupied Goma at the end of 2012 before being defeated by Congolese forces and the UN the following year.

Last month, DR Congo filed a criminal case against the European subsidiaries of Apple, accusing the US company of buying “blood minerals” from Rwanda originally mined in eastern DR Congo that eventually end up in tech devices.

Apple has insisted it verifies the origin of the materials it uses.