Rebels Backed by Rwanda Close In on Major City in Congo
Africa|Rebels Backed by Rwanda Close In on Major City in Congo
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/world/africa/rwanda-rebels-congo.html
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The last two towns before Goma, a provincial capital in Congo’s east, have just fallen to M23 rebels. They last captured the city in 2012.
Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surrounded the eastern city of Goma, in one of the sharpest escalations in years of a conflict that has pitted the Central African country against its neighbor Rwanda.
On Thursday morning, rebels from the Rwanda-backed M23 group captured Saké, forcing Congolese forces to quickly retreat, according to humanitarian officials and eyewitnesses. That was the last major army position before Goma, a provincial capital with more than 2 million people.
Goma’s fall would be a major milestone for a group that captured the city and held it for two weeks in 2012, but withdrew after Rwanda came under intense international pressure to stop backing the militia. The United States and United Nations say Rwanda funds and directs the M23, charges Rwanda has denied.
In late 2013, the Congolese army and United Nations forces quickly defeated the rebel group, which lay dormant afterward for almost a decade.
M23 has since surged back, starting in late 2021, dealing the Congolese army a series of major defeats. At the same time, peace talks spearheaded by Angola, Congo’s southwestern neighbor, have stalled, and the fate of U.N. peacekeepers was until recently up in the air, with their mandate renewed in December for just one year.