In eastern DRC, fighting between armed groups intensifies and the army redeploys

Fighting has intensified in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the army is redeploying in areas from which it was driven out at the start of the year, according to consistent local sources. After six months of precarious calm interspersed with attacks, fighting resumed at the beginning of October between local armed groups and the rebels of the March 23 Movement (M23), supported by Rwanda, in the territories of Masisi and Rutshuru (province of North Kivu).

At least 20 civilians have been killed and more than 30 others injured since October 1 and the “resurgence of violent clashes between armed groups,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday, October 9. in the DRC. Still according to OCHA, “more than 84,700 people have been forced to flee their homes” and humanitarian access “remains severely restricted” due to “intensifying fighting”.

The clashes are taking place in areas where several thousand soldiers from an East African force (the EAC-RF), deployed at the start of the year, are supposed to provide a buffer zone between the belligerents. Particularly in Kitshanga, a strategic city located about fifty kilometers northwest of Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and from where the army was chased out in January by the M23. The town passed last week from the hands of the EAC-RF to local militias, then to the M23, which took it back on Saturday without a fight.

Contacted by AFP on Monday, residents and a military source on site indicated that the rebels had left the town and that the armed groups and “hundreds of FARDC [Armed Forces of the DRC]” had entered Kitshanga. “This evening, fighting resumed after the arrival of the FARDC,” a resident explained by telephone.

The peacekeepers are “strengthening their presence”

In New York, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, indicated that the blue helmets of MONUSCO, the United Nations mission in the DRC, “are strengthening their presence in Kitshanga” to “protect civilians caught in fighting between the M23 and other armed groups.” As a result of this fighting, “2,000 people took refuge in the UN mission base in Kitshanga and 18,000 men, women and children took shelter just outside the base,” he added.

Further south, in Kilolirwe (around 40 km from Goma), which had also come under the control of the M23 at the end of the week, residents indicated that the FARDC had arrived in the locality “on foot and with two Jeeps” and had “brought rations to the “wazalendo”, the militiamen who oppose the M23. According to witnesses, fighting was underway Monday afternoon.

Further east, near Tongo, on the edge of Virunga Park and 50 km north of Goma, residents reported fighting between militiamen and the M23 on Monday. Some mentioned that the Congolese army was “firing with mortars to support the wazalendo.”

The army “respects the ceasefire,” declared the spokesperson for the military governor of North Kivu, Lieutenant-Colonel Guillaume Ndjike, contacted by AFP. A week before the resumption of clashes, the main armed groups in the province met with the military authorities in Goma and declared “to be ready to lay down their arms”.