
At least 773 people have been killed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) largest city of Goma and its vicinity within a week, reports Al Jazeera. As always, the civil population carries the burden of the war between army troops and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who captured Goma last week.
According to Al Jazeera, these figures remain provisional “because the rebels asked the population to clean the streets of Goma,” a spokesperson of the Congolese government told reporters in the capital Kinshasa. The number of killings could be much higher. “There should be mass graves and the Rwandans took care to evacuate theirs.”
In Eastern Congo there are more than 100 armed groups trying to get control over the rich mineral reserves, and the March 23 Movement (M23) is most important of them. Minerals like Coltan are essential for much of the world’s technology including mobile phones.
The M23 is backed by about 4,000 troops from Rwanda, said United Nations experts. The national military is weak, and many soldiers ran over to rebel groups with better salaries.
The East of the DR Congo has remained an area of conflicts since the Congo Wars of the 1990s. The region’s largest city, Goma, had been occupied by M23 rebels as early as 2012 and now again in 2025. Since 2022 there are tensions between the DRC and Rwanda.
Photo: MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
=> Read also: Pressure grows on EU to freeze minerals deal with Rwanda over DRC fighting: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/02/pressure-grows-on-eu-to-freeze-minerals-deal-with-rwanda-over-drc-fighting