According to sources cited by the France-Presse agency, fighting continues between the Congolese army and local armed groups, on the one hand, and the M23 rebels, supported by the Rwandan army, according to the Kinshasa authorities and the United Nations (UN).
The ceasefire should have taken place since Tuesday "in the entire eastern region of the DRCongo", based on the calendar agreed on March 3, at the mini-summit in Luanda, and announced by the Angolan presidency, a mediator appointed by the African Union to this conflict.
Still, the rebels advanced and tightened their grip on the provincial capital, Goma, a city of more than a million inhabitants, between Rwanda, to the east, and Lake Kivu, to the south.
The M23 launched an offensive around Kirotshe and Shasha on the shores of Lake Kivu, cutting off some traffic on the national road to South Kivu.
"Since the morning, there has been fighting after the M23 attack," Clodius Buhaze, a local civil society member, said by telephone, adding that the rebels are in the hills "above the hospital, less than a kilometer from the road" and are gaining ground on the army and local militiamen who participated in the fighting.
Lieutenant Colonel Guillaume Ndjike, spokesman for North Kivu province, asked the population, in a video posted on the social network Twitter Wednesday afternoon, "not to attack the various contingents deployed as part of the regional force of the African Community Eastern".
This force was initially mobilized to prevent the advance of the M23, but it encountered some hostility from the population, who accused it of apathy, reports the French news agency.
The Tutsi-dominated M23 group remained inactive for almost a decade, but resumed fighting at the end of 2021. Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of supporting this rebel movement, which has been corroborated by United Nations experts, although Kigali has deny.
