GOMA, Congo (AP) - Rwanda-backed rebels were expanding their presence in eastern Congo after capturing Goma, the region’s major city, the U.N. said Friday, also expressing concerns over executions it learned were carried out by the rebels in recent days following a major escalation of their yearslong rebellion.
Rwanda-backed rebels move deeper into eastern Congo as UN reports executions and rapes
GOMA, Congo (AP) - Rwanda-backed rebels were expanding their presence in eastern Congo after capturing Goma, the region’s major city, the U.N. said Friday, also expressing concerns over executions it learned were carried out by the rebels in recent days following a major escalation of their yearslong rebellion.
Congolese forces, meanwhile, repelled the rebels in their offensive towards South Kivu’s provincial capital of Bakuvu on Thursday, residents and local officials said. The M23 rebel group has captured several towns after seizing neighboring Goma, a humanitarian hub critical for many of the 6 million people displaced by the conflict. They have said they will march to Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is nearly 1,000 miles (around 1,600 kilometers) away.
The M23 group is the most potent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control in Congo's mineral-rich east, which holds vast deposits critical to much of the world's technology. They are backed by around 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts, far more than in 2012 when they first captured Goma in a conflict driven by ethnic grievances.
U.N. human rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence spoke at a briefing on Friday about the worsening human rights crisis in the aftermath of the rebellion, including bomb strikes on at least two internally displaced persons camps that killed an unspecified number of people.