Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday entered the vital trading hub of Bukavu in the east of the country, according to the fighters and videos circulated by local residents. If confirmed, Bukavu would be the latest city to fall in a sweeping offensive that has revealed the weakness of the crumbling Congolese army.
The M23 rebels — who are supported and directed by Rwanda, Congo’s much smaller neighbor — appeared to meet no resistance, residents said, as they marched into Bukavu, a provincial capital that is a major center for gold trading and smuggling.
“We’re there, we’re there in Bukavu,” said Willy Ngoma, a M23 spokesman reached by telephone.
On Sunday, the rebels addressed a crowd of people in Bukavu’s main square after they entered the city in long, silent columns, according to three eyewitnesses and videos shared on social media and verified by the Times. The eyewitnesses requested anonymity for fear of retribution from the armed group.
Days earlier, Congolese soldiers had fled the city in similar columns. The Congolese government has not spoken publicly about the situation in the city Sunday, and the capture of Bukavu has not been independently confirmed.
The apparent fall of Bukavu would stand in sharp contrast to the protracted battle for the key city of Goma last month, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed, according to the United Nations.
With the capture of Bukavu, a city of more than a million people that sits on the edge of a crystalline lake, the M23 rebels would now control the two largest trading hubs in Congo’s mineral-rich east.
Experts say Bukavu’s capture threatens to draw more neighboring countries into the conflict. The city sits 20 miles away from the border with Burundi, whose troops have been fighting alongside the Congolese army.
“It will increase the risk of regional war, especially with Burundi,” Fred Bauma, the executive director of Ebuteli, a research group specializing on Congo, said about Bukavu’s fall.
Now, M23 is also now more directly connected to its powerful backer, Rwanda. Bukavu and Goma, on the southern and northern edges of the sprawling Lake Kivu, both sit on the border with Rwanda, whose exports of minerals smuggled out of Congo have spiked in recent years, according to U.N. experts.
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has acknowledged that Rwandan soldiers are present in eastern Congo but has denied backing M23.
The leaders of M23 have now vowed to march on Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s largest cities. The Congolese government has refused to sit down with M23 leaders or Rwanda, and its military response on the ground has been limited.
M23 is the most powerful of the dozens of armed groups that have destabilized eastern Congo over nearly three decades. Since capturing Goma, the rebels have vowed to restore order and security — attempting to present the group as an administrative power qualified enough to govern large swathes of one of Africa’s richest mining regions.
“It is important that we can work hand in hand for our country’s development,” Bernard Byamungu, a high-ranking M23 official, told Bukavu’s residents on Sunday, according to a video verified by the Times. “No development without work, but let’s not forget that peace remains fundamental for a stable nation.”
Mr. Byamungu then ordered residents to go back home so that M23 could finish securing the city.
The group’s calls for peace have been at odds with M23’s bloody tactics on the ground. M23 has repeatedly violated cease-fires, including some that it had unilaterally declared. Mr. Byamungu, according to the United Nations, planned and directed the killings of civilians and the extrajudicial executions of soldiers.
Unlike Goma, the apparent capture of Bukavu was hardly a surprise: Schools there closed earlier this month and countless people fled in recent weeks in anticipation of the M23 offensive.
The M23 rebels entered Bukavu on Sunday days after they said they had captured a nearby airport that the Congolese army had used as a key rear base to try to contain the group’s advance in the province of South Kivu.
The latest M23 offensive, which began in early January, has further destabilized eastern Congo, a mineral-rich region scarred by nearly three decades of conflict over access to land and gold, tin and cobalt, among other minerals.
More than 500,000 people were displaced last month, according to the United Nations. The number of rapes against children carried out by armed groups, already rampant in the region, has soared in recent weeks, according to UNICEF.
Ruth Maclean contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal.
