KINSHASA – Congo's president says he is going to launch a unity government as violence spreads across the country's east and pressure mounts over his handling of the crisis.
In some of his first statements since Rwandan-backed rebels captured major cities in eastern Congo, President Felix Tshisekedi told a meeting of the Sacred Union of the Nation ruling coalition on Saturday not to be distracted by internal quarrels.
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“I lost the battle and not the war. I must reach out to everyone including the opposition. There will be a government of national unity," said Tshisekedi. He didn’t give more details on what that would entail or when it would happen.
M23 rebels — the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control and influence in eastern Congo — have swept through the region seizing key cities, killing some 3,000 people. In a lightning three-week offensive, the M23 took control of eastern Congo’s main city Goma and seized the second largest city, Bukavu.
The rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts, and at times have vowed to march as far as Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away.
Rwanda has accused Congo of enlisting ethnic Hutu fighters responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda of minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
M23 says it’s fighting to protect Tutsis and Congolese of Rwandan origin from discrimination and wants to transform Congo from a failed state to a modern one. Analysts have called those pretexts for Rwanda’s involvement.
On Sunday, Congo’s communications minister, Patrick Muyaya said in a post on X that Rwanda and M23 had killed more than a dozen people in Goma. M23 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.