{"id":222271,"date":"2025-01-23T14:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T14:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/rebels-backed-by-rwanda-close-in-on-major-city-in-congo\/"},"modified":"2025-01-23T14:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T14:12:09","slug":"rebels-backed-by-rwanda-close-in-on-major-city-in-congo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/rebels-backed-by-rwanda-close-in-on-major-city-in-congo\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebels Backed by Rwanda Close In on Major City in Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/23\/multimedia\/23drc-rebels-1-wzgh\/23drc-rebels-1-wzgh-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Rebels Backed by Rwanda Close In on Major City in Congo\" title=\"Rebels Backed by Rwanda Close In on Major City in Congo\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surrounded the eastern city of Goma, in one of the sharpest escalations in years of a conflict that has pitted the Central African country against its neighbor Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Thursday morning, rebels from the Rwanda-backed M23 group captured Sak\u00e9, forcing Congolese forces to quickly retreat, according to humanitarian officials and eyewitnesses. That was the last major army position before Goma, a provincial capital with more than 2 million people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Goma\u2019s fall would be a major milestone for a group that captured the city and held it for two weeks in 2012, but withdrew after Rwanda came under intense international pressure to stop backing the militia. The United States and United Nations say Rwanda funds and directs the M23, charges Rwanda has denied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In late 2013, the Congolese army and United Nations forces quickly defeated the rebel group, which lay dormant afterward for almost a decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">M23 has since surged back, starting in late 2021, dealing the Congolese army a series of major defeats. At the same time, peace talks spearheaded by Angola, Congo\u2019s southwestern neighbor, have stalled, and the fate of U.N. peacekeepers was until recently up in the air, with their mandate renewed in December for just one year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Goma, a hub for humanitarian organizations, U.N. agencies and foreign diplomatic missions in eastern Congo, has been a refuge for more than a million civilians fleeing violence from M23 militiamen, Congolese forces and other armed groups in the region.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The rebels launched a major offensive this year, and now the city is<span class=\"css-8l6xbc evw5hdy0\">  <\/span>increasingly cut off. Rebels control the land immediately to Goma\u2019s north and west. On its east lies the border with Rwanda. Its south is demarcated by the Lake Kivu shoreline. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Wounded civilians fleeing Sak\u00e9 arrived on Thursday morning on foot and on motorcycles at a Goma hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Abdourahmane Sidib\u00e9, a senior surgeon with the group, said he and his colleagues have been treating twice as many civilians over the past few weeks than on average last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere was too much bombing,\u201d said Hawa Amisi, 52, who fled with only a thin mattress, a bottle of water, and four of her children, who had nothing to eat. Ms. Amisi, who had been separated from her husband in the melee, said she saw dead bodies lying in the street as they fled. \u201cSo many people died,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Bruno Lemarquis, the United Nations\u2019 top humanitarian official in Congo, said 2025 would be \u201ca difficult year\u201d because humanitarian needs are likely to rise, and funds are expected to dwindle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With peace talks having collapsed in December, dwindling attention from a distracted world, and the United States \u2014 traditionally Congo\u2019s largest humanitarian donor \u2014 expected to slash aid, humanitarian officials and experts say one of the world\u2019s biggest crises risks becoming even more neglected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cEven before the new U.S. administration came in, we were told that U.S. humanitarian support would be slashed by a third,\u201d Mr. Lemarquis said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Caleb Kabanda and Saikou Jammeh contributed reporting from Goma and Dakar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/23\/world\/africa\/rwanda-rebels-congo.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surrounded the eastern city of Goma, in one of the sharpest escalations in years of a conflict that has pitted the Central African country against its neighbor Rwanda. On Thursday morning, rebels from the Rwanda-backed M23 group captured Sak\u00e9, forcing Congolese forces to quickly retreat, according to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/23\/multimedia\/23drc-rebels-1-wzgh\/23drc-rebels-1-wzgh-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7222,122,3600,38993,137233,174773,174775,164576,174774,3096,846,29975,60],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222273,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222271\/revisions\/222273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}