M23 fighters and Rwandan troops on Wednesday pushed further into the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as Burundi warned Kigali it would respond if attacked.
The armed group, which has gained ground against the Congolese army since it re-emerged in 2021, seized two towns on the road to Bukavu, the provincial capital of South Kivu, local and humanitarian sources told AFP.
Ihusi and Kalehe, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Bukavu, were taken over as the group made its way down the highway alongside Lake Kivu, the sources added.
One person living in Kalehe described seeing “numerous” fighters, adding that “We see them moving around without saying a word to people.”
In a statement, the government in Kinshasa called for an “emergency meeting” of the Southern African Development Community and the East African Community of states to “assess the situation and the consequences of this new act of aggression”, calling for sanctions.
SADC and EAC leaders who met in Tanzania last Saturday had urged their military leaders to come up with a plan for implementing an “unconditional” ceasefire from Thursday.
There was a lull in fighting for two days after the summit but clashes resumed on Tuesday in Kalehe, around 30 kilometres from the strategic airport of Kavumu, which is still held by Congolese forces.
Since the re-emergence of the M23, several peace talks hosted by Angola and Kenya have failed to halt the violence in the mineral-rich region.
Rwanda denies military support for the M23 but the latest violence has strained already frayed ties between Kigali and Kinshasa.
On Wednesday, RwandAir said DR Congo had shut its airspace to aircraft registered in Rwanda, forcing it to re-route flights.
Burundi, which borders both DRC and Rwanda, has sent around 10,000 soldiers to South Kivu to support the Congolese army.
Its soldiers were involved in fighting against the M23 in the last few days on the plateau overlooking Lake Kivu, security sources said.
“The one that is going to attack us, we will ourselves attack,” Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye told locals in the border town of Bugabira on Tuesday, calling Rwanda a “bad neighbour”.
Ndayishimiye said earlier this month that he feared the conflict — the latest episode of decades-long turmoil in eastern DRC — could trigger a regional war.
In Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu that fell to the M23 at the end of January, camps on the western edge of the city emptied after the armed group on Monday ordered displaced people to leave within 72 hours.
In the Bulengo camp, families on Wednesday headed west on lorries and motorbikes after taking down their tents and shelters, AFP journalists said.
“We cried, telling them that there are disabled and old people here but they told us to leave as we came,” said Chantal Uwimana, a mother of 10 children.
At a hotel in central Goma, a delegation of Congolese religious representatives from Kinshasa held talks with Corneille Nangaa, who heads the River Congo Alliance, a political-military grouping that includes the M23.
Kinshasa has so far rejected any direct talks with the group.
“Our priority is peace, that’s why we’ve come to listen to them, to see how people live here,” said Fulgence Muteba, head of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO).
“There are many things that could be sorted out if Congolese got around a table,” he added, saying that the country’s President Felix Tshisekedi “had encouraged the initiative”.
