An Eastern African force in eastern DR Congo on Monday announced it would send a fact-finding mission to an area where locals accused M23 rebels of killing 11 people.
The M23 has denied carrying out the massacre.
But according to sources in North Kivu province’s Rutshuru territory, the bodies of 11 people who were shot or hacked to death were discovered on Sunday.
They said the bodies were found in Bukombo, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of the provincial capital Goma, after rebels withdrew from the area.
The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a respected conflict monitor, said on Monday that “at least 11 civilians” were killed in the area after being forced to transport military equipment.
It added that the M23 group was the suspected culprit.
But M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka denied any responsibility.
He told AFP that the M23 had handed control over Bukombo to the East African Community (EAC) military force deployed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Kanyuka added that forces allied to the government in the capital Kinshasa had been fighting for control over the area after the M23 withdrawal.
EAC force spokesman Major Albert Wanyoni Nyakundi said a fact-finding team was preparing to travel to the area to “find out what really happened and who was involved.”
The Tutsi-led M23 has seized swathes of territory and displaced about a million people in eastern DRC since re-emerging from dormancy in late 2021.
An informal, fragile truce has held between the rebels and Congolese regulars since the EAC force deployed to the region late last year. But sporadic clashes pit M23 fighters against local militias loyal to the government.
Independent UN experts, the DRC government and several Western nations including the United States and France accuse Rwanda of actively backing the M23, despite denials from Kigali.
