Rwandan-backed rebels entered into Goma on Monday, and troops from the East African neighbours exchanged fire over the border in the worst escalation of the long-running conflict for more than a decade.

The rebel alliance spearheaded by the ethnic Tutsi-led M23 militia said it had captured the lakeside city of over one million people, which lies on the border with Rwanda and was also briefly occupied by M23 in 2012.

Gunfire rang out near the airport, in the city centre and on the border, with two residents reporting ongoing clashes between government-aligned militia and M23 fighters.

“We can still hear gunfire coming from the airport,” said one resident from Goma’s northeast Majengo neighbourhood. “A rocket landed close to the church, behind our house.”

According to two UN sources speaking from a UN site between the two, Congolese soldiers positioned on Mount Goma, a hill within the city, exchanged artillery fire with Rwandan troops on the other side of the border, in the town of Gisenyi.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the M23 offensive risks spiralling into a broader regional war.

A Reuters reporter in Gisenyi saw columns of people fleeing, some holding children by hand or carrying heavy bags. One man was carrying a mattress on his head. Gunfire could be heard in the background.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to 100 million people and is roughly the size of Western Europe.

Its plentiful mineral supplies are in the sights of Chinese and Western companies and multiple armed groups.

Its eastern borderlands are a tinderbox of rebel and militia fiefdoms stemming from two regional wars after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide when Hutu extremists murdered close to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Many Hutus, some of them genocide perpetrators and others refugees, fled to Congo after the genocide, which is one of the root causes of instability there.

Rwanda accuses the Congolese government and army of allying themselves with a Hutu-led militia that they say threatens Rwanda’s safety as well as Tutsis living in Congo.

Congo rejects Rwanda’s claims, accusing Kigali of arming M23 to control swathes of Congolese territory for looting minerals.

The Kinshasa government said Rwanda’s army was present in Goma, but Congo’s forces would work to prevent “carnage and loss of human life.”

The M23, the latest in a long line of Tutsi-led rebel movements backed by Rwanda, captured Goma in 2012 but withdrew days later after an agreement brokered by neighbouring nations.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance that includes the M23, told Reuters that his forces controlled Goma.

“They (army soldiers) have started surrendering, but it takes time,” he said.

(Reuters/NAN)