Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi on Monday accused Rwanda of “violating its commitments”, just days after the two countries’ leaders signed a peace deal aimed at ending fighting in eastern DR Congo.
Violence in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo intensified early this year when Rwanda-backed M23 fighters seized the key North Kivu regional city of Goma in January.
Hopes have been high that peace could finally be within reach for the region, plagued by three decades of conflict, after the Congolese and Rwandan leaders on Thursday signed a peace deal in Washington.
But fresh fighting the very next day forced hundreds of people to flee across the border into Rwanda.
“Despite our good faith and the recently ratified agreement, it is clear that Rwanda is already violating its commitments,” Tshisekedi said in an address delivered from parliament to the nation, referring to attacks by Rwandan forces in several locations in South Kivu province in recent days.
“On the very day after the (peace accord) signing, units of the Rwandan defence forces carried out and supported attacks with heavy weaponry,” Tshisekedi said.
On Sunday, UN experts said Rwanda’s army and the Kigali-backed M23 group had carried out executions and forced mass displacements of people in eastern DRC.
The M23 and Rwandan soldiers committed “summary executions, arrests and arbitrary detentions”, and caused the mass displacement of populations, the experts’ report said.
Recent days have seen fighters from the anti-government M23 clash in South Kivu province with the Congolese army, backed by thousands of Burundian soldiers deployed alongside it.
Those latest clashes come at the end of a bloody year. Hard on the heels of capturing Goma, the M23 backed by Kigali and its army also took the key city of Bukavu in South Kivu.
Last week’s peace agreement saw Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame sign an accord that their host, US President Donald Trump, dubbed a “miracle” but which many observers doubted would last.
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