Fighting has escalated sharply in recent weeks in eastern Congo, where rebels have seized key towns and are closing in on the city of Goma, the government’s last stronghold in the North Kivu province, where Goma is the provincial capital and which borders Rwanda.

The decades-old conflict in Congo’s mineral-rich east has “drastically deteriorated” since early 2022 and gotten even worse since last October, with sharp increases in sexual violence, the number of wounded and child recruitment, the top Red Cross official in the country says.