A rebel leader in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo says his fighters will withdraw from a key city at the request of the US.<\/p>\n
Corneille Nangaa’s statement came days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the capture of Uvira by rebel forces violated a peace deal, and the US would “take action to ensure promises made to the President [Donald Trump] are kept”.<\/p>\n
Nangaa said that rebel forces would pull out of the city as a “trust-building measure”.<\/p>\n
The US accuses Rwanda of backing the rebels. Rwanda denies the allegation, but its President, Paul Kagame, signed a peace accord on 4 December with his DR Congo counterpart, Felix Tshisekedi, at a ceremony in Washington hosted by Trump.<\/p>\n
The US president hailed the deal as “historic” and “a great day for Africa”.<\/p>\n
The rebels were not signatories to it – and have been taking part in a parallel peace process led by Qatar, a US ally that has strong ties with Rwanda.<\/p>\n
Nangaa is the coordinator of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), a coalition of rebel groups. It includes the M23, the most powerful force that European countries, along with the US, say is backed by Rwanda.<\/p>\n
DR Congo’s army is supported by troops from neighbouring Burundi.<\/p>\n
The M23’s capture of Uvira was a major blow to them, as the city is only 27km (17 miles) from Burundi’s economic capital, Bujumbura, on the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika.<\/p>\n
“AFC\/M23 will unilaterally withdraw its forces from the city of Uvira as requested by the United States mediation,” Nangaa said in a statement, adding that this was being done to give the Qatar-brokered peace process the “maximum chance to succeed”. <\/p>\n
He did not indicate when the withdrawal would take place, but called for the deployment of a “neutral force” to monitor a ceasefire and to prevent DR Congo’s army from regaining control of territory it had lost. <\/p>\n
About 200,000 people have fled their homes in eastern DR Congo since the latest round of fighting started early this month, the UN says.<\/p>\n
At least 74 people, mostly civilians, had been killed, and 83 others had been admitted to hospital with wounds, it added.<\/p>\n
Eastern DR Congo has been wracked by conflict for more than 30 years, with numerous peace initiatives aimed at ending the fighting having failed. <\/p>\n
The Trump administration hopes that its peace initiative will work and pave the way for US companies to boost their investments in the resource-rich region. <\/p>\n
The US State Department said in 2023 that DR Congo had an estimated $25tn (\u00a321.2tn) in mineral reserves.<\/p>\n
This included cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese and tantalum – needed to make the electronic components used in computers, electric vehicles, mobile phones, wind turbines and military hardware.<\/p>\n
The rebels began a major advance earlier this year when they captured Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, on the border with Rwanda.<\/p>\n
At the time, South African troops were deployed to help DR Congo’s army, but they were forced to withdraw after the M23 seized the city in January.<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards the rebels captured the next big city in eastern DR Congo, Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province.<\/p>\n
The move on Uvira – the government’s last major foothold in South Kivu – came after the rebels broke the defence lines of the DR Congo army, militias allied with it and Burundian troops.<\/p>\n
The offensive started a few days before Kagame and Tshisekedi flew to Washington to ratify the agreement first hammered out in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rebel leader in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo says his fighters will withdraw from a key city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-349395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}