DRC accuses Rwanda of killing over 1,500 civilians in past month

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has accused Rwanda of killing more than 1,500 civilians in the eastern DRC since early December, when the M23 rebels launched a fresh offensive.

Just days after the DRC and Rwandan governments signed a US-brokered peace deal on December 4, the M23 took the key city of Uvira, causing tens of thousands of people to flee across the border into Burundi.

DRC has accused Rwanda of backing the M23 rebels. Rwanda, however, has refuted this.

"The provisional death toll of civilian victims of Rwandan operations, which have seen the combined use of bombs and kamikaze drones since the beginning of December, stands at more than 1,500," according to a DRC statement on Wednesday.

Condemning a "clear act of aggression by Rwanda”, the DRC also accused Kigali of sending "three new Rwandan battalions" into the eastern province of South Kivu, to advance towards the "strategic Kalemie axis" in the southeastern mining province of Tanganyika.

If the M23 does march south to Tanganyika, the armed group would gain a foothold in the northeast of the key region formerly known as Katanga province, the DRC's mining heartland.

Since taking up arms again in 2021, the M23 has seized swathes of the mineral-rich eastern DRC, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and triggering a spiralling humanitarian crisis.

In the wake of launching its latest offensive on December 2, following a six-month lull, the armed group took Uvira on December 10, and with it control of the land border with the DRC's ally Burundi.

After Washington accused Rwanda of violating the peace agreement, hailed by US President Donald Trump as a "miracle" deal, despite the M23 offensive, the group said on December 17 that it would withdraw from the city of several thousand people.

But both Washington and the DRC have cast doubt on the sincerity of the M23's announcement, while local sources told AFP on Thursday that M23 members and police officers had stayed behind in Uvira.

At the beginning of the week, the DRC army said it had retaken several settlements around Uvira following "violent clashes.”

The town's capture came nearly a year after the M23 took the major eastern cities of Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces.

According to the United Nations, more than 80,000 people have fled across the border to Burundi following the M23's latest advance, which has also internally displaced at least half a million people within South Kivu alone.