Rwanda and Congo war: Covert battles amid Trump's push for peace

Rwanda and Congo war: Rwanda covert battles amid Trump's push for peace

Over 7,000 dead. Hundreds raped. Displaced people’s camps flattened. City centers looted. Prisons set ablaze. Businesses bankrupted. Nearly 5 million people on the move.

The latest conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has brought horrific violence and suffering to innocent people for three and a half years. The war flared up in November 2021, when the March 23 Movement rebel group attacked military positions on the border between Congo and Rwanda.

The conflict peaked this January and February when the rebels — and, notably, thousands of Rwandan soldiers fighting with them —seized the Congo’s regional capitals of Goma and Bukavu, forcing the Congolese army to flee. The impact on civilians was devastating: Locals and journalists described how bodies lined the streets and the injured crowded the cities’ hospitals, while hundreds of thousands fled their homes.