Fighting between M23 rebels and pro-Congo militias was underway Sunday in Nyabiondo, about 100 km north of Goma in eastern Congo, residents said, days after a nearby attack left a heavy civilian death toll, according to the United Nations and an NGO.
The M23 rebel group has seized swathes of mineral-rich eastern Congo since the start of the year.
“M23 has taken Nyabiondo since 11 a.m. [local time] (0900 GMT), following clashes,” Kipanda Biiri, an official from the local administrative authority who was fleeing the area, told Reuters.
“The enemy opened a large-scale assault on Nyabiondo this morning,” said Telesphore Mitondeke, a civil society rapporteur in Masisi, the area where Nyabiondo is located, referring to the M23 rebels.
“For the moment there is shooting from every direction in the center of Nyabiondo, where the clashes are taking place.”
The fighting follows clashes last week between M23 and a pro-Congolese government militia in the village of Tambi, about 18 km northeast of the town of Masisi, which culminated in an attack overnight on March 5 leaving many civilian casualties, according to the head of a local NGO.
An internal United Nations memo seen by Reuters said Sunday that between 13 and 40 civilians were believed to have been killed in that attack.
Separately, a spokesperson for the rebel alliance that includes M23 said Sunday on X that one of the pro-government militias that operates in eastern Congo had switched sides and joined its alliance.
The spokesperson for the group that militia had been a part of said in a statement that the rest of the group remained loyal to the Congolese government and its army.
M23 rebels say that they intend to seize power in Congo’s capital Kinshasa. They also accuse Congo’s government of not living up to previous peace deals and fully integrating Congolese Tutsis into the army and administration.
The group’s spread into new mineral-rich territories this year also gives it scope to acquire more mining revenue, analysts say.
The Democratic Republic of Congo government has repeatedly accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebel group, a claim that Rwanda denies. Kigali, in turn, alleges that Kinshasa collaborates with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or the FDLR, a Hutu armed group with ties to the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, an allegation the DRC rejects.
The DRC has officially designated the M23 rebel group as a terrorist organization, while the United Nations and the United States classify it as an armed rebel group.
