Fighting rages in Congo's Goma while embassies attacked in capital

Dead bodies lay in the streets, gunfire rang out and hospitals were overwhelmed in east Congo's largest city on Tuesday, as M23 rebels backed by Rwanda faced pockets of resistance from army and pro-government militias.

A day after the rebels marched into the lakeside city, protesters in the capital attacked a UN compound and embassies including those of Rwanda, France and the United States, expressing anger at what they said was foreign interference.

M23 fighters entered Goma on Monday in the worst escalation since 2012 of a three-decade conflict rooted in the long fallout from the Rwandan genocide and control of Congo's abundant mineral resources.

The Congolese government and the head of UN peacekeeping have said Rwandan troops were present in Goma, backing up their M23 allies. Rwanda has said it was adopting a defensive posture because of the threat posed to it by Congolese militias.

Dozens of Democratic Republic of Congo troops had surrendered, but some soldiers and pro-government militiamen were holding out, residents and UN sources said.

People in several neighbourhoods reported small arms fire and some loud explosions on Tuesday morning.

"I have heard the crackle of gunfire from midnight until now ... it is coming from near the airport," an elderly woman in Goma's northern Majengo neighbourhood, close to the airport, told Reuters by phone.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told a briefing in Geneva colleagues had reported "heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets."

"We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property ... and humanitarian health facilities being hit," he added. Other international aid officials described hospitals overwhelmed with wounded being treated in hallways.

"The town is a powderkeg," Willy Ngumbi, a bishop in Goma, said. Explosives had hit a house where priests were staying and the maternity ward of a Catholic hospital on Monday, he said by phone. "The youth are armed and the fighting is now taking place in the town."

FEAR OF SPIRAL

The UN and global powers fear the conflict could spiral into a regional war akin to those of 1996-1997 and 1998-2003 that killed millions, mostly from hunger and disease.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance that includes the M23, has suggested the rebels' aim is to replace President Felix Tshisekedi and his government in the capital 1,600 km (1,000 miles) away.

In Kinshasa, angry crowds burned tyres, chanted anti-Rwanda slogans and attacked diplomatic installations of several countries seen as favourable to Rwanda, leading the police to fire tear gas.

A European diplomatic source said the Rwandan, French, US, Ugandan and Kenyan embassies had been targeted.

"What Rwanda is doing is with the complicity of France, the US and Belgium. The Congolese people are fed up. How many times to we have to die?" said protester Joseph Ngoy.

The United Nations has been caught up in the fighting with a peacekeeping force. South Africa said three of its peacekeepers were killed in a crossfire between government troops and rebels and a fourth had succumbed to wounds from earlier fighting, bringing the number of its fatalities in the past week to 13.

It said President Cyril Ramaphosa had spoken by phone to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and the two had agreed on the need for a ceasefire.

On Monday, Rwanda's army reported five people killed and 26 injured in exchanges of fire with Congolese troops near the border.

The fighting has sent thousands of people streaming out of Goma, a regional hub for humanitarian aid for displaced people. Hundreds of thousands have fled fighting since the start of the year, on top of 3 million displaced in eastern Congo last year.

FAST OFFENSIVE

M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed insurgencies that have brought tumult to Congo since the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda thirty years ago, when Hutu extremists killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and then were toppled by the Tutsi-led forces that still dominate Rwanda.

M23 fighters took up arms again in 2022, a decade after a previous insurgency that briefly captured Goma.

In recent weeks they made swift gains through North Kivu province on the border with Rwanda, ignoring calls from world leaders to halt their offensive.

Rwanda has dismissed calls for troops to leave, saying its security is threatened by ethnic Hutu militias, some with links to the extremists who murdered close to 1 million people during the 1994 genocide. UN experts say Kigali has deployed 3,000-4,000 troops in eastern Congo to support the M23.

Congo's government has called on international powers to pressure Rwanda, potentially via sanctions, to end the M23 offensive.

In a phone call with Congo president Tshisekedi on Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio "condemned the assault on Goma by the Rwanda-backed M23 and affirmed the United States' respect for the sovereignty of the DRC," the State Department said.

The UN Security Council was due to discuss the crisis again on Tuesday, diplomats said.