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BUKAVu, DR Congo: Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Felix Tshisekedi were set to join talks in Tanzania on Saturday as regional leaders convened in a bid to defuse the conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has rapidly seized swathes of territory in the mineral-rich eastern DRC in an offensive that has left thousands dead and displaced vast numbers.
The group took the strategic city of Goma last week and is pushing into the neighboring South Kivu province in the latest episode of decades-long turmoil in the region.
Kagame arrived for the summit in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, that brought together the eight countries of the East African Community and 16-member South African Development Community.
However, the Congolese presidency confirmed Friday that Tshisekedi would only attend via video call.
The presidents of Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe were among those present as the summit began.
Since the M23 re-emerged in 2021, peace talks hosted by either Angola and Kenya have failed and multiple ceasefires collapsed.
Rwanda denies military support for the M23 but a UN report said last year it had around 4,000 troops in DRC and profited from smuggling vast amounts of gold and coltan — a mineral vital to phones and laptops — out of the country.
Rwanda accuses the DRC of sheltering the FDLR, an armed group created by ethnic Hutus who massacred Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The summit comes as the M23 advances on the town of Kavumu, which hosts an airport critical to supplying Congolese troops.
Kavumu is the last barrier before the South Kivu provincial capital Bukavu on the Rwandan border, where panic has set in.
A Bukavu resident said shops were barricading their fronts and emptying storerooms for fear of looting, while schools and universities suspended classes on Friday.
“The border with Rwanda is open but almost impassable because of the number of people trying to cross. It’s total chaos,” they said.
UN rights chief Volker Turk warned: “If nothing is done, the worst may be yet to come, for the people of the eastern DRC, but also beyond the country’s borders.”
Turk said nearly 3,000 people had been confirmed killed and 2,880 injured since M23 entered Goma on January 26, and that final tolls were likely much higher.
He also said his team was “currently verifying multiple allegations of rape, gang rape and sexual slavery.”
The M23 has already installed its own mayor and local authorities in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.
It has vowed to go all the way to the national capital Kinshasa, even though it lies about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away across the vast country, which is roughly the size of Western Europe.
The DRC army, which has a reputation for poor training and corruption, has been forced into multiple retreats.
The offensive has raised fears of regional war, given that several countries are engaged in supporting DRC militarily, including South Africa, Burundi and Malawi.
Regional foreign ministers gathered on Friday for the first day of the summit in Tanzania ahead of their leaders on Saturday.
Kenyan foreign secretary Musalia Mudavadi said there was a “golden opportunity” to find a solution, calling for the previous peace processes hosted by Angola and Kenya to be merged into one.