US urges cease-fire as invasion plunges Congo City into crisis

The US called for an immediate truce in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where a top United Nations official said the city of Goma is straining under the assault of a Rwanda-backed rebel attack.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Tuesday that the US is “deeply troubled” by the escalating violence in Congo, the State Department said.

“The secretary urged an immediate cease-fire in the region, and for all parties to respect sovereign territorial integrity,” it said in a statement.

The assault by the M23 rebel group on Goma, a key trading hub in a mineral-rich region, began on Monday, raising concerns about a wider conflict between Rwanda and Congo. Fighting continued Tuesday, though the streets were relatively calm by the afternoon after M23 “took control of an important part of the city,” the UN said in a communique.

Rwanda denies supporting M23, who say they revived a rebellion in 2021 to protect ethnic Tutsis and other speakers of the Rwandan language in Congo. The group last took Goma in 2012, triggering widespread condemnation and sanctions by the international community.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the violence in Goma, electricity has failed across parts of the city, water supplies have been contaminated and hospitals are full, according to Vivian van de Perre, the UN’s deputy special representative in Congo.

UN peacekeeping bases don’t have enough space or resources for those seeking protection, she said from Goma. The bases themselves have been hit by mortars and bullets.

Most members of the UN Security Council, which met for the second time in less than two days to discuss the crisis, urged Rwanda to halt its military incursion. Kagame faces growing pressure to stop backing the rebel group.

“Goma is the heart of the DRC,” said Sierra Leone’s ambassador, Michael Imran Kanu, who spoke on behalf of several African nations. “Allowing this vital city to remain under the control of a rebel group sends a disturbing message about the ability or willingness of the international community to prevent threats to international peace and security from flourishing.”

Dorothy Shea, the interim US charge d’affairs to the UN, asked the organization “to consider measures to halt the territorial advances by Rwandan troops and the M23.”

The US is concerned that M23 and Rwanda are “opening up a bloody new front of this conflict” in the nearby gold-rich South Kivu province, she said.

Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, Congo’s foreign minister, pleaded with the Security Council to sanction Rwandan officials and block the nation’s weapons purchases and mineral sales.

“What is the degree of humanitarian disaster and flagrant violations of our territory that needs to be achieved for you to condemn the perpetrators in the M23, the Rwandan officers and their accomplices?” Wagner asked. “If this council does not condemn them, this will go down in history as a time of powerlessness and indifference of the Security Council.”

Meanwhile, Rwanda’s UN ambassador, Ernest Rwamucyo, argued that his country’s “defensive posture” along its borders was justified by saying that Congolese army shells had killed five Rwandan civilians and wounded 35.

“The deteriorating security situation in the eastern DRC has only one immediate cause: The obsession by the president of the DRC for a military solution and thirst for regime change in Rwanda,” he said.

The conflict in eastern Congo has simmered since the mid-1990s when the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide spilled over the border.

Earlier on Tuesday in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, protesters ransacked the Rwandan and Ugandan embassies and threw rocks and lit fires outside the embassies of Kenya, Belgium, France, the US, and at the UN Development Program building.

Wagner apologised for the destruction.

Rwamucyo said his country would stand down if a Rwandan Hutu rebel group in Congo was neutralised, foreign troops supporting the Congolese withdrew, UN peacekeepers halted their support for Congo’s army and if all parties adhered to a cease-fire.

© 2025 Bloomberg

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