Rwanda, DR Congo leaders in crisis summit as Goma’s fate hangs in balance

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Rwanda, DR Congo leaders in crisis summit as Goma’s fate hangs in balance

10:11 CAT | 29 Jan 2025

FILE - The M23 armed group entered Goma late on Sunday in a major escalation. [File photo: AFP]

The president of crisis-hit Democratic Republic of Congo was set to meet his Rwandan counterpart at an emergency summit on Wednesday, as fighters backed by Kigali appeared on the brink of seizing the key city of Goma.

The M23 armed group took control of Goma’s airport on Tuesday, a security source said, following days of intense clashes that killed more than 100 people and wounded nearly 1,000, according to an AFP tally of tolls from the city’s overflowing hospitals.

It remained unclear how much of the provincial capital was under the control of Congolese forces versus the Rwandan-backed M23, which claimed it had taken the city on Sunday.

But as fighting eased on Tuesday night, only M23 fighters and Rwandan forces were visible on the streets, according to AFP journalists.

The security source said “more than 1,200 Congolese soldiers have surrendered and are confined” to the airport base of the UN’s mission in the DRC.

Congolese leader Felix Tshisekedi was to meet Wednesday with Rwandan President Paul Kagame at an “extraordinary” summit of the East African Community hosted by Kenya, its president said.

Ahead of the crisis talks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pressed Kagame for an immediate end to the fighting in a call the Rwandan leader described Wednesday as “productive”.

The M23’s lightning offensive marks a major escalation in the DRC’s troubled east, haunted by the legacy of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and plagued by fighting between armed groups backed by regional rivals in its aftermath.

It has also triggered a spiralling humanitarian crisis, with the UN warning of hundreds of thousands forced from their homes, serious food shortages, looted aid, overwhelmed hospitals and the potential spread of disease.

Destin Jamaica Kela, who fled across the border to Rwanda as fighting raged in Goma, told AFP that “things changed very fast”.

“Bombs were falling and killing other people everywhere, we saw dead bodies,” the 24-year-old said.

Source: AFP