Uganda is supporting the M23 rebels and Rwanda has 4,000 troops on Congolese soil, a UN report alleges.
Uganda is backing M23 rebels fighting across its border in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, UN experts say, warning that a rapidly escalating crisis “carried the risk of triggering a wider regional conflict”.
The UN experts said that Rwandan troops were "matching if not surpassing" the number of M23 fighters, thought to be at around 3,000 in mid-April, on Congolese soil. They began to rearm three years ago and the group now controls swathes of territory in the North Kivu province, where the UN report says M23 has installed a parallel administration., which covers events up until mid-April, has just been published - but it was first handed to the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee and then sent to the UN Security Council last month.
But the UN report said it was likely that Uganda was allowing M23 supplies and new recruits through its territory. Uganda deputy military spokesman, Deo Akiiki, told the Reuters news agency the allegations in the report were false: "It would be mad for us to destabilise the same area we are sacrificing it all to have it stable.”Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes as fighting intensifies between the M23 and the Congolese army and its militia allies
It also gave detailed accounts of other things it felt were incorrect, like an alleged M23 attack at Goma airport and the M23’s alleged forced recruitment and use of child soldiers, which Rwanda denies too.
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