DR Congo city sees influx of people fleeing fighting

Hundreds of families have fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern city of Uvira near the Burundi border to escape fighting between the army and the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group, local sources said Tuesday.

The anti-government M23 seized Uvira, a strategic city of several hundred thousand inhabitants, on December 10, giving it control of the land border with the DRC's ally Burundi.

Just days before, the Congolese and Rwandan governments had signed a peace deal in Washington.

Under US pressure, the M23 announced a week later its withdrawal from Uvira and called for "mediators and other partners to ensure Uvira is protected from violence, reprisals and remilitarisation".

Jacques Bulenda, a resident of the Mulongwe neighbourhood, told AFP that displaced people "mainly women and children, have been arriving on masse in Uvira for three days".

He said they had come from areas where fighting was taking place such as Kigongo, Katongo and Kabimba, located less than 10 kilometres (six miles) from Uvira.

The displaced are being taken in by family or host families "which exacerbates the economic and food insecurity in the city", resident Gatabishwa Masumbuko said.

The Congolese army retook on Monday the steep slopes of Luhanga and Kigongo in Uvira territory after "violent clashes", its regional spokesman Reagan Mbuyi Kalonji said.

AFP could not independently confirm this.

The peace deal signed in Washington aimed to end three decades of conflict in the DRC's mineral-rich east.

The M23's takeover of Uvira was part of an offensive launched at the beginning of December in South Kivu province and followed the capture early this year of two other major eastern cities, Goma and Bukavu.