Rwanda-DRC: the Rwandan army announces that it has repelled an aggression by Congolese soldiers

The incident took place this Wednesday around 4:30 a.m, a press release from the Rwandan army says. It took place between the district of Rusizi in the western province of Rwanda and the province of South Kivu in eastern Congo. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The Rwandan army statement suggests the “assalliants” were estimated at about one section (12 to 14 soldiers).

“They entered the buffer zone on the Rusizi-Bukavu border (capital of South Kivu),” the document reads.

“These soldiers shot at our border post. Our security forces shot back and FARDC (Democratic Republic of Congo’s armed forces ) soldiers withdrew,” the statement added.

The Rwandan army says there were no casualties on the Rwandan side, and that the “situation is calm”.

Rwandan officials have also seized the expanded joint verification and ad hoc verification mechanisms to “investigate this act of provocation”.

In November and June 2022, two Congolese soldiers were killed by Rwandan forces. Both incidents happened at the border post known as “Small Barrier”. It is between the district of Rubavu (western Rwanda) and the city of Goma (capital of North Kivu) in the Eastern DRC. And recently the Rwandan army fired on a Congolese fighter jet that had violated Rwandan airspace, according to Rwandan authorities. The Congolese government has denied these allegations.

Relations between the two countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa and members of the East African economic bloc (EAC) have worsened since the resurgence of the M23. The former ethnic Tutsi rebellion which took up arms again at the end of 2021 accusing the Congolese authorities of not having respected its commitments on the reintegration of its fighters benefits the support of Rwanda, according to the Congolese government, which Rwanda denies.

On several occasions, Rwanda has claimed that Congolese fighter jets have violated its airspace as the DRC accuses the Rwandan army, among other things, of having deployed special forces on Congolese soil in order to reinforce the M23. The two countries accuse each other of “sabotage and provocation”.

The leaders of the sub-region, who have held multiple meetings since mid-June under the initiative of Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye, at the same time current President of the EAC and former President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta, facilitator in the Congolese crisis, are still struggling to “reconcile the two nations” and “find a solution to the crisis” ravaging in the east of the vast country of Central Africa.