By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-22 09:21:19 | Updated at 2025-03-23 03:58:12
18 hours ago
Rwanda-backed M23 rebels captured a third major town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, expanding their stranglehold over the country’s mineral-rich east.
“The city of Walikale, the administrative centre of Walikale Territory, has been liberated by our forces to ensure the safety of the civilian population and their property,” spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said in a statement.
The group already controls the city of Goma in North Kivu province and Bukavu in South Kivu province. The latest conquest comes after the surprise meeting on Tuesday between presidents of Congo and Rwanda in Qatar, where they pledged to ease tensions.
Congolese Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner accused Rwanda of saying one thing and doing another.
The Qatar meeting was meant to “break this deadlock and to renew at the highest level of the most concerned parties the commitment to a ceasefire, to a cessation of hostilities as a first step to engage further conversations on other issues,” she said in an interview on Thursday.
Rwanda is “pretending to commit to peace, pretending to commit to the cessation of hostilities” while the M23 continues to expand its territory on the ground, Kayikwamba said.
