At least 700 killed since Sunday, says the UN

The UN says that at least 700 people have been killed in intense rubber fighting, the largest city in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, since Sunday.

The UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said that 2,800 people were injured, since the M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, captured the capital of the province of North Kivu.

Now it is reported that the rebels are moving south to Bukavu, the capital of southern Kivu.

The conflict in the east of the Congo dates back to the 1990s, but has quickly intensified in recent weeks.

M23, which is composed of ethnic tutsis, says they are fighting for the rights of minorities, while the government of Dr. Congo says that the rebels backed by Rwanda are seeking control of the vast mineral wealth of the eastern region.

On Friday, Dujarric said that the figures of victims come from an evaluation carried out by the World Health Organization and its partners, together with the government of Dr. Congo, between Sunday and Thursday.

The UN spokesman also warned that the death toll would increase even more.

In an attempt to stop the progress of M23, Dr. Congo’s army has established a defensive line on the road between rubber and Bukavu, according to the AFP news agency.

Hundreds of civil volunteers have been enlisted to defend Bukavu.

A young man told AFP: “I’m ready to die for my country.”

Jean -jacques Purusi Sadiki, the governor of South Kivu, the province M23, said in the Reuters news agency that the government army and its allies were retaining the rebels, although that statement has not been verified independently.

Earlier this week, M23 promised to continue his offensive until he reached the capital Kinshasa, about 2,600 km (1,600 miles) to the west.

Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, the country’s foreign minister, told the BBC that Rwanda was illegally occupying her country and trying to orchestrate the regime change.

Wagner said the international community had allowed decades of the president of Ruanda Paul Kagame and could not hold him responsible for violating international law.

The spokeswoman of the Rwanda government, Yolande Makolo, denied the accusation, saying that the country’s troops only deployed to prevent the conflict from spilling to their territory.

“We are not interested in war, we are not interested in annexation, we are not interested in regime change,” Makolo told the BBC Newsday program.

The UN experts estimated last year that Ruanda had between 3,000 and 4,000 troops that operated together with the M23 in the east of the DR Congo.

On Friday, the regional bloc of the South African Development Community (SADC) declared its support for DR Congo at a crisis summit in Zimbabwe.

In a statement, the group of 16 members “reaffirmed their commitment to solidarity and unwavering to continue supporting the RDC in their search to safeguard their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

SADC has sent peace maintenance troops, mainly from South Africa, Dr Congo to combat armed groups such as M23 and restore peace in the region rich in minerals after decades of disturbances.

Sixteen soldiers from the countries of southern Africa have been killed in clashes with the M23 around rubber last week.

The struggle has also worsened the humanitarian crisis in the east of the Congo.

Shelley Thakral, from the UN World Food Program, said the city’s residents were running out of food, clean water and medical supplies.

“The supply chain has really strangled at this time if you think about access to the land, air access, when everything is closed,” he told AFP.

Since the beginning of 2025, more than 400,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to the UN refugee agency.

Dr Congo is the second largest country in Africa, approximately two thirds of the size of Western Europe, and limits with nine different countries.

The previous conflicts in the country during the 1990s were based on several neighbors and were called the World Wars of Africa.