Sawt Falasteen - Rwanda-backed group controls most of DRC city as mediator urges talks

After intense fighting that saw the M23 armed group and Rwandan troops seize the city's airport and key sites, calm returned to the mineral trading hub.

With international pressure rising to end the crisis, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi declined to attend talks with his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on Wednesday.

Tshisekedi is scheduled to speak publicly for the first time since the M23 entered the centre of the eastern provincial capital after a weeks-long lightning offensive.

Angola, which mediated talks that fell through in December, called for the Congolese and Rwandan leaders to urgently meet in Luanda.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has called on the world to stop the advance in its mineral-rich east, which has been wracked by decades of conflict that can be partly traced back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The latest fighting has heightened an already dire humanitarian crisis in the region, forcing half a million people from their homes since the start of the year, according to the United Nations.

Three days of clashes have left more than 100 dead and nearly 1,000 wounded, according to an AFP tally from the city's overflowing hospitals.

One medic told AFP that many bodies were still to be recovered in the city of one million people wedged between Lake Kivu and the Rwandan border.

After many Congolese soldiers fled or were captured, the only forces in the streets on Wednesday were M23 fighters or Rwandan soldiers, some firing guns into the air, AFP reporters said.

A long line of hundreds of Congolese soldiers and pro-Kinshasa militiamen, unarmed and wearing white headbands, were marched through the city's centre by M23 fighters, a security source said.

- 'Cut off from world' -

Goma residents also started emerging after days trapped inside homes without electricity.

"It was a bit frightening with the gunshots we were hearing," student Merdi Kambelenge told AFP.

"But, as far as we could tell, it has already stabilised despite the fact that there's no power... we're cut off from the world."

There was also widespread looting in the city, AFP journalists observed.

Earlier in the week, Kenya had announced the Congolese and Rwanda leaders would attend a virtual crisis summit of the East African Community on Wednesday.

While Tshisekedi pulled out, Kagame will still attend, his spokesman confirmed to AFP.

On the other side of the vast central African country, furious protesters in the capital Kinshasa on Tuesday attacked the embassies of various nations they accused of not stepping in to halt the chaos in the east.

The UN, United States, China and the European Union have all called on Rwanda to withdraw its forces from the region.

Rwanda's ambassador-at-large for the Great Lakes region Vincent Karega told AFP the M23 advance "will continue" into neighbouring South Kivu province.

It was even possible the fighters could push beyond the country's east, Karega added.

- 'Bullet pierced roof' -

Humanitarian groups have also warned of food and water shortages around Goma, as well as the looting of aid.

"At Kyeshero hospital, a bullet pierced the roof of the operating theatre during an operation," Virginie Napolitano, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in North Kivu, said in a statement.

More than 280 Romanian "mercenaries" fighting alongside Congolese forces have surrendered to M23 in the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi, Rwanda's army said on X.

"We weren't on a battlefield, we were here to train and help with artillery," one of the Romanians told AFP, only giving the name Emile.

The vast central African country has gold and other minerals such as cobalt, a key ingredient in top-range batteries including for smartphones and electric cars.

The DRC has accused Rwanda of waging the offensive to profit from the region's mineral wealth -- a claim backed by UN experts who say Kigali has thousands of troops in its neighbour and "de facto control" over the M23.

Rwanda has denied the accusations.

Kagame has never admitted military involvement, saying Rwanda's aim is to tackle an armed group, the FDLR, created by former Hutu leaders who massacred Tutsis during the genocide.

The UN's mission in the DRC has warned the fighting risks reigniting ethnic conflicts dating back to the genocide, saying it had documented "at least one case of ethnically motivated lynching".

The M23 re-emerged in late 2021. After the Angola-mediated talks fell through in December, it began marching towards Goma.

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U.AlSharif--SF-PST