Rebels from the M23 movement captured a border town in eastern DR Congo without a fight on Sunday, local sources said, the same day a ceasefire between DR Congo and neighboring Rwanda was meant to come into force.
Ishasha, on the border with Uganda, was the latest town to fall to the majority-ethnic Tutsi movement backed by Rwanda.
M23 has seized large swathes of territory in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province since it launched an offensive at the end of 2021.
“Ishasha has passed without resistance under M23 control,” civil society leader Romy Sawasawa told AFP.
Congolese police officers had crossed into Uganda to flee the “numerous and well-equipped” rebels.
Gad Rugaju, Uganda’s deputy of security in the district, confirmed that about 90 Congolese police officers had crossed into their country.
He said the officers would undergo “evaluation and they will probably be expelled after consultations.”
The M23 called a meeting where they told townspeople to go about their business as usual, and called on pro-government militias to join them and for the police to return, resident Yasini Mambo said.
They also told ethnic Hutu Rwandan rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) to “go back home to Rwanda” Mambo added.
Ishasha lies on the southern shores of Lake Edward around 200 kilometres (124 miles) northeast of Goma, North Kivu’s provincial capital.
Its capture comes a day after the fall of the nearby large town of Nyamilima, which locals say the M23 also took without resistance.
Questioned by AFP, a Congolese security source confirmed the capture of Ishasha.
“It’s a non-event. Nobody was there” during the offensive, the source said, adding that “the ceasefire stories are a farce.”
For 30 years, the DR Congo’s mineral-rich east has suffered from the ravages of fighting between local and foreign armed groups, dating back to the regional wars of the 1990s.