Fierce fighting rocked the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday as the Rwanda-backed M23 militia rapidly advances towards the strategic city of Uvira on the border with Burundi.
The armed group and its Rwandan allies were around 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of Uvira, compared to around 30 km on Monday, security and military sources told AFP.
Local people described a state of growing panic as bombardments struck the hills above the city of several hundred thousand residents.
“Three bombs have just exploded in the hills. It’s every man for himself,” said one resident reached by telephone.
“We are all under the beds in Uvira — that’s the reality,” another resident said, while a representative of civil society who would not give their name described fighting going on on the city’s outskirts.
The renewed violence comes just days after Kinshasa and Kigali signed a peace agreement at a ceremony presided over by US President Donald Trump.
Fighting was also reported in Runingo, another small locality within 20 km of Uvira, as the M23 and the Rwandan army closed in.
With Uvira sitting across Lake Tanganyika from its economic capital Bujumbura, Burundi views the prospect of the city falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat.
It is the main sizeable locality in the area still to fall to the M23 and its capture would essentially cut off the zone from DRC control.
Burundi deployed about 10,000 soldiers to the eastern DRC in October 2023 as part of a military cooperation agreement, and security sources say reinforcements have since taken that presence to around 18,000 men.
The M23 and Rwandan forces launched their Uvira offensive on December 1.
Rich in natural resources, eastern DRC has been choked by successive conflicts for around three decades.
Violence in the region intensified early this year when M23 fighters seized the key eastern city of Goma in January, followed by Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, a few weeks later.
– Regional risk –
On Thursday, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame signed in Washington what Trump called a “miracle” deal to end the conflict.
The agreement includes an economic component intended to secure US supplies of critical minerals present in the region, as Washington seeks to challenge China’s dominance in the sector.
But even on the day of the signing, intense fighting took place in South Kivu, where Uvira is located, that included the bombing of houses and schools.
Witnesses and military sources in Uvira said that Congolese soldiers fleeing the fighting had arrived in the city overnight Monday and shops were looted at dawn.
Several hundred Congolese and Burundian soldiers had already fled to Burundi on Monday, according to military sources, since the M23 fighters embarked on their latest offensive from Kamanyola, some 70 km north of Uvira.
Since the M23’s lightning offensive early this year, the front had largely stabilised over the past nine months.
Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye warned in February there was a danger of the conflict escalating into a broader regional war, a fear echoed by the United Nations.
