By Gabriele Steinhauser and Nicholas Bariyo

A Rwanda-backed rebel group on Monday entered the Congolese city of Goma, a longtime international aid hub and safe-haven for civilians in the country's war-torn east.

Residents of the city, which sits on Congo's border with Rwanda, reported gunfire and heavy shelling overnight and in the morning hours, after rebels overran thousands of Congolese troops, United Nations peacekeepers and soldiers from several other African countries. An extended battle for Goma threatens a new bloody chapter in a 30-year conflict set off by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It could also be an early test for the Trump administration and its willingness to get involved in a war involving one of America's closest allies in Africa.

The rebel group, known as the March 23 Movement, or M23, said early Monday that it had taken control of Goma. But people inside and near the city said the Congolese army seemed to be putting up heavy resistance.

"This is the most intense fighting I have heard since the war on Goma started," said Maina King'ori, acting Congo country director for U.S.-based aid group CARE, who was speaking from the Rwandan side of the border between the two countries. In a voice note sent by King'ori, blasts of shelling could be heard nearby.

Last week, M23 had captured the last two towns outside Goma that weren't yet under its control. Its fighters rampaged through sprawling displacement camps on the outskirts of the city, tearing down shacks and telling everyone to leave.

That sent hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, fleeing into Goma in a desperate search for safety. U.N. officials estimated Monday that more than 1 million displaced people were now inside the city, in addition to Goma's regular residents.

In a statement published early Monday, M23 directed Congolese soldiers to surrender their weapons to the U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Goma and assemble at a sports stadium near the city center. Video footage sent to The Wall Street Journal by a Goma resident showed hundreds of soldiers and members of government-aligned armed groups walking toward the city's port on Lake Kivu, likely hoping to flee by boat. The resident said gunfire could be heard from close to the Goma headquarters of the national radio station.

Named for a failed 2009 peace treaty, M23 traces its roots to the start of the conflict in eastern Congo in the mid-1990s, when, after the Rwanda genocide, millions of mostly ethnic Hutu refugees crossed into the region. Among them were members of Rwanda's ousted government and many of the perpetrators of the massacres of Rwandan Tutsis.

Today's M23 is made up of mostly Congolese Tutsi who say they are defending members of their community from persecution by the Congolese military and other armed groups. U.N. experts say the group has long received support from Rwanda and that Rwanda has also deployed some 4,000 of its own troops to fight alongside M23.

In an emergency session on Sunday, the U.N. Security Council called on M23 to halt its offensive and on unnamed "external forces" to immediately withdraw from Goma and its surroundings.

Rwanda's Foreign Ministry denied that its forces were involved in the conflict. "The fighting close to the Rwandan border continues to present a serious threat to Rwanda's security and territorial integrity and necessitates Rwanda's sustained defensive posture," the ministry said on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Congolese government didn't respond to requests for comment about the situation in Goma. On Sunday, the country's foreign minister, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, addressed the Security Council and urged other members to levy sanctions on the Rwandan military and political leaders.

Goma has long served as a hub for international aid groups supporting the millions of Congolese who have been displaced by the fighting in the region. In addition to M23, dozens of other armed groups -- some now aligned with the government -- have a long history of hurting civilians and jockeying for control of the region's minerals, including coltan and gold.

The U.N. over the weekend used planes to evacuate hundreds of its staff and international employees of nongovernmental organizations from Goma. By Sunday afternoon, M23 fighters had blocked the airport and said the airspace over the city was closed.

"We are trapped," Bintou Keita, the U.N.'s special representative for Congo and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission Monusco, told the Security Council.

One aid worker for an international NGO said hundreds of foreign aid workers crossed the land border between Congo and Rwanda in Goma on Monday morning, but that the border had since been closed.

"Everyone is in a panic," he said in a brief telephone interview. He said Monusco was also evacuating staff via buses on the Rwandan side of the border.

A spokeswoman for the U.N. peacekeeping force and other Monusco officials didn't respond to requests for comment on the evacuations or whether the mission was complying with the M23 directive to collect weapons from Congolese soldiers. At least 13 international peacekeepers from the U.N. and an alliance of African states have been killed over the past week, including nine soldiers from South Africa.

Willy Ngoma, a spokesman for M23, said the group wasn't a threat to civilians in Goma. "We are trying to protect the population," he said.

Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have documented serious abuses of civilians by all sides in the conflict, including the indiscriminate shelling of displacement camps, forced recruitment of children and gang rapes of women.

Goma's Ndosho Hospital has been overwhelmed by patients with gunshot and other war wounds. On Thursday alone, the hospital, which normally has capacity of 146 patients, received 120 wounded, more than during the entire month of December, said a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which supports the hospital. The restaurant was converted into a hospital ward and the parking lot serves as a triage area, she said.

M23 briefly occupied Goma in 2012, but its forces mostly withdrew from Congo following international pressure, including on Rwanda's leadership, and reinforcement of the U.N. peacekeeping mission. Then-President Obama publicly criticized Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his government's support for M23 and suspended military aid for the county.

The group restarted its offensive in 2022 and has since taken swaths of territory across eastern Congo.

Nathan Basima, who runs a small grocery store on the eastern outskirts of Goma, said he saw several columns of M23 rebels patrolling streets that had been largely deserted by residents.

"We had packed our bags and the plan was to leave this morning, but we are now all trapped," the father of five said in a telephone interview. "It's very scary."

Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at Gabriele.Steinhauser@wsj.com and Nicholas Bariyo at nicholas.bariyo@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 27, 2025 05:24 ET (10:24 GMT)

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