Kinshasa, December 10, 2025 – Heavy fighting erupted across South Kivu province on Tuesday as Rwanda-backed M23 rebels pushed to within 15 kilometres of the strategic city of Uvira on the Burundi border, dealing a devastating blow to the peace agreement signed just six days earlier between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
Security sources and local officials confirmed that M23 fighters, supported by units of the Rwandan Defence Forces, advanced rapidly along National Route 5 after overrunning several villages north of the city. Only 24 hours earlier, the front line had been nearly 30 kilometres away. By Tuesday evening, artillery fire and drone strikes were audible inside Uvira itself, triggering a mass exodus of terrified residents toward Burundi and across Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania.
The renewed offensive has thrown the Washington Accords — signed on December 4 in the presence of U.S. President Donald Trump, who described the deal as a “miracle” — into immediate crisis. Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame had committed to an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Rwandan troops, the cantonment of M23 fighters, and the neutralisation of the FDLR militia in exchange for joint economic projects, including privileged U.S. access to eastern Congo’s vast deposits of cobalt, coltan, and lithium.
Yet fighting never stopped. Even on the day of the signing ceremony, heavy shelling struck the town of Kamanyola, destroying homes and schools and killing at least twelve civilians. Clashes have only intensified since, with M23 claiming control of the key towns of Sange and Luvungi and announcing the defection of several pro-government Mai-Mai militia groups.
Uvira, a city of more than 600,000 people on the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika, is the last major government stronghold in South Kivu. Its capture would sever Kinshasa’s remaining supply lines in the province, hand M23 complete control of lucrative mineral smuggling routes, and place rebel artillery within striking distance of Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura — a scenario that has prompted frantic diplomacy in the region.
Burundian troops, deployed in the DRC since 2023 to support the Congolese army, have suffered heavy casualties in recent days and begun a partial withdrawal from forward positions in the Ruzizi Plain. Thousands of Congolese refugees have poured across the border, swelling camps in northern Burundi that were already struggling with earlier waves of displacement.
Inside Uvira, panic has taken hold. Residents describe nights lit by tracer fire and the constant buzz of drones overhead. Markets have shut, hospitals are overwhelmed, and ferry services across the lake have been suspended. “We heard the bombs getting closer every hour,” one fleeing mother told reporters at a makeshift camp in Bujumbura. “We just took our children and ran.”
The speed of the M23 advance has exposed deep disarray within the Congolese armed forces. Reports of infighting between regular troops and allied militias, combined with the arrest of nearly thirty senior officers in Kinshasa on suspicion of collaborating with the rebels, have paralysed command structures in the east.
The roots of the current crisis stretch back decades. Eastern Congo has been in almost constant conflict since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when millions of Hutu refugees and militias fled across the border. Rwanda has repeatedly intervened — officially to neutralise the FDLR, unofficially to secure influence and access to mineral wealth. M23, a Tutsi-led rebel group that was defeated in 2013, re-emerged in late 2021 with direct Rwandan backing and has since grown into the most powerful armed group in the region.
In 2025 alone, M23 captured the provincial capitals of Goma in January and Bukavu in February, displacing more than a million people and installing parallel administrations that collect taxes on coltan and gold mines. The group now controls territory roughly the size of Belgium and has been accused by the United Nations of widespread atrocities.
The Washington agreement was meant to break this cycle by tying security guarantees to economic incentives, particularly American investment in the mineral sector to counter China’s near-monopoly on critical raw materials. But with fighting escalating rather than subsiding, diplomats privately admit the deal is on life support.
Congolese officials accuse Rwanda of deliberately sabotaging the process to consolidate territorial gains before any withdrawal. Kigali, in turn, claims Kinshasa has failed to honour commitments to disarm the FDLR and integrate Congolese Tutsi into the national army.
As the people of Uvira spend another night under fire, the fragile hope generated by last week’s handshakes in Washington has evaporated. What was celebrated as a historic breakthrough now looks more like a brief pause before the next, potentially catastrophic, phase of one of Africa’s longest and deadliest wars.
