Over 7,000 killed in eastern DR Congo since January: PM

By AFP
February 25, 2025
Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) dig a common grave at the Musigoko cemetery for the burial of bodies, following clashes between M23 rebels and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC),in Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo February 19, 2025.— Reuters
Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) dig a common grave at the Musigoko cemetery for the burial of bodies, following clashes between M23 rebels and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC),in Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo February 19, 2025.— Reuters

GENEVA: Violence raging in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has killed “more than 7,000 compatriots”, many of them civilians, since last month, the Congolese premier said Monday.

The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has seized large swathes of the mineral-rich eastern DRC -- including the main cities of Goma and Bukavu -- in the face of limited resistance from Congolese forces. “The security situation in eastern DRC has reached alarming levels,” Prime Minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, stressing that since January, “the deaths of more than 7,000 compatriots” had been registered.

They include “more than 2,500 bodies buried without being identified”, she said, adding that another 1,500 bodies were still in the morgue. Asked at a press briefing on the sidelines of the council whether the dead were civilians or soldiers, she said that “for the moment... we have not yet been able to identify all of these people”. But, she stressed, “there is a significant mass of civilians who are part of these dead”. The M23 movement, supported by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, according to UN experts, now controls large tracts of troubled eastern DRC.