Despite international pressure and the announcement of a ceasefire scheduled for Tuesday noon (10:00 GMT) between the army and the M23 rebellion, fighting continues in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to local sources.

After a few days of relative calm, fighting resumed Monday on the northern and southern fronts around rebel-held areas in North Kivu province, killing and injuring several civilians, according to hospital and humanitarian sources.

In the evening, from New York, the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres urged "the M23 to respect the ceasefire" with a view to "its total and effective withdrawal from all the occupied areas" in the east of the ground floor.

But the next day, the clashes continued and the M23 seized new localities.

"Karuba (about 30 km west of the provincial capital Goma) has just fallen into rebel hands," said a security source.

"We attacked them last night but this morning they launched a counter-attack and at this time the fighting continues," added the same source.

Same thing on the northern front, where the M23 remains on the offensive on villages and positions of the FARDC (armed forces of the DRC), provoking, according to witnesses, the withdrawal of soldiers towards the city of Kanyabayonga, further north. .

But despite its progress on the ground, the M23 rebellion announced Tuesday in a press release "an effective ceasefire" at 12:00 p.m., in order to "open the way to direct dialogue with the Kinshasa government".

Both sides accuse each other of launching attacks on their positions.

Willy Ngoma, a spokesman for M23, told AFP that the Congolese army on Monday attacked "all (its) positions simultaneously" and that the rebellion was still under attack on Tuesday morning.

The M23 reacts "in self-defense", he said.

The Congolese authorities, through the voice of Lieutenant-Colonel Guillaume Ndjike, spokesperson for the army in North Kivu, accuse for their part "the terrorists of the M23 and their sponsors of the Rwanda Defense Force (the Rwandan army)" of having launched on Monday "an attack which targeted the Burundian contingent recently deployed as part of the regional force of the East African Community (EAC)".

"Huge Damage"

According to the lieutenant-colonel, this "mortar" attack also targeted a camp for displaced persons and the city of Mubambiro, causing "enormous damage", 20 km west of Goma.

On Saturday, during his visit to the DRC, French President Emmanuel Macron said of the commitments made by the parties to the conflict that in the event of non-compliance, sanctions could be taken, including against Rwanda.

The mostly Tutsi M23 rebellion, dormant for almost a decade, took up arms again at the end of 2021. Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of supporting it, which has been corroborated by UN experts, although Kigali denies it. defend.

In Karuba, the fighting raging between the army and the M23 since Monday left six dead and "at least ten injured", according to Folo Ombeni, vice president of local civil society.

Léopold Muisha, from the civil society of the Kamuronza grouping, at the western exit of Goma, affirms for his part in a press release that the M23 bombarded civilian objectives, specifying that "seven bombs were fired on Monday at the end of the afternoon , killing two civilians, including a 12-year-old child, and injuring six others.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which takes care of some of the war wounded, mentions one dead and seven wounded during this bombardment.

The new announced ceasefire comes after the failure of all previous regional initiatives launched to end the advance of the M23 in recent months in North Kivu.

On March 3 in Luanda, the Angolan presidency, designated mediator by the African Union in this crisis, announced a new timetable for the cessation of hostilities, starting this Tuesday at noon with the cessation of fighting "in the entire eastern region of the DRC. ".

With AFP

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