East DR Congo ceasefire said to be agreed after Angola talks

LUANDA - The foreign ministers of DR Congo and Rwanda agreed to a ceasefire in eastern Congo, the Angolan presidency said Tuesday, following peace talks in Luanda.

Angola has been mediating in the conflict in the eastern DRC region of North Kivu, where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have been fighting Democratic Republic of Congo forces since late 2021.

"The second ministerial meeting between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, held today in Luanda under the mediation of the Republic of Angola, agreed on the establishment of a ceasefire that will come into effect from midnight on 4 August 2024," the Angolan presidency said.

The ceasefire will be monitored by a reinforced "Ad Hoc Verification Mechanism", it said, referring to a monitoring system previously created under the auspices of a regional grouping.

The deal follows a meeting between the foreign ministers of Rwanda and DR Congo hosted by Angolan President Joao Lourenco at the presidential palace in the capital.

It comes as a humanitarian truce between the M23 rebels and government forces was due to expire at 11:59 pm (2159 GMT) on August 3.

It was not immediately clear if the ceasefire would extend the truce or have a larger scope.

'DE FACTO CONTROL'

On July 5, the United States announced the first two weeks of a "humanitarian truce", but the deal was not respected in some areas.

Two children and two teenagers were killed in a bombardment on July 15, four days before the truce was set to expire.

At the end of June, the M23 and the Rwandan army seized several towns in Lubero territory, in the north of North Kivu, following the collapse of the Congolese army and its auxiliary militias.

The M23 rebels, backed by Rwanda, launched an offensive in North Kivu province in the mineral-rich eastern DR Congo at the end of 2021, and since then have seized large swathes of territory.

An experts' report commissioned by the UN Security Council said that 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan soldiers had been fighting alongside the M23 rebels and that Kigali had "de facto control" of the group's operations.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has not explicitly denied the presence of Rwandan forces in DRC, and has made no bones about his willingness to take a "defensive" position to protect Kigali's interests.

DR Congo's mineral-rich east has been racked for 30 years by fighting between both local and foreign-based armed groups, going back to regional wars of the 1990s.

The conflict has killed scores of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.