(Bloomberg) — 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 center 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.
Kanyuka said M23 was committed to the ceasefire, “however, in the event of provocation or attacks against civilians, our forces will respond professionally.”
“Ceasefire requires respect by all parties to the conflict,” Yolande Makolo, spokesperson for Rwanda’s government, told Bloomberg in a message late Friday. “For this to happen, the DRC has to immediately halt drone and fighter jet attacks in the Walikale area as well as the Minebwe area in South Kivu.”
Rwanda has denied financing the rebels and in turn accused Congo of supporting a militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, whose founders participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
–With assistance from Antony Sguazzin.
(Updates with Rwandan comment in eighth paragraph)
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