Fighters from the M23 rebel group seized the town of Kiwandja in eastern Congo on Saturday, residents and a local official said, effectively cutting North Kivu's capital Goma off from the upper half of the province.
Three people living in Kiwandja told Reuters that droves of fighters had entered the town without resistance after a short spat of gunfire. Kivu Security Tracker, which maps violence in eastern Congo, tweeted that shots were fired in town early Saturday morning.
"Kiwanja [is] an important entity that opens the direct way to Goma," Saidi Balikwisha Emil, a member of North Kivu's provincial parliament, said in a WhatsApp message. Neither General Sylvain Ekenge, the army's national spokesman, nor Colonel Ndjike Kaiko, the army's spokesman for North Kivu, immediately responded to calls and messages requesting comment.
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