Rebel forces backed by Rwanda have captured the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo town of Masisi, according to various reports.
This is the second town the M23 group has captured in as many days in the mineral-rich province of North Kivu.
The group has taken control of vast swathes of eastern DR Congo since 2021, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Angola tried to mediate the talks between President Félix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame. But these broke last month.
“We are horrified to learn that M23 has captured the center of Masisi,” Alexis Bahunga, a member of the North Kivu provincial assembly, told the AFP news agency.
He said that this is “pushing the territory into a serious humanitarian crisis” and called on the government to strengthen the military’s capacity in the region.
One resident told AFP that M23 had held a meeting of the town’s residents, saying they had “come to liberate the country”.
Congolese authorities have not yet commented on the loss of the city.
Masisi, which has about 40,000 inhabitants, is the capital of the territory of the same name.
It is about 80 km (50 mi) north of the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma, which the M23 briefly occupied in 2012.
On Friday, the M23 captured the nearby town of Katale.
Last year there were fears that it would M23 will march again on Gomaa city of about two million inhabitants.
However, there was a lull in the fighting until early December when the fighting resumed.
In July, Rwanda did not deny a The UN report states that it had about 4,000 soldiers fighting along the M23 in DR Congo.
He accused the Congolese government of not doing enough to resolve decades of conflict in the country’s east. Rwanda has previously said that authorities in the DR Congo are collaborating with some of those responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda against ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
M23, formed as an offshoot of another rebel group, began operating in 2012 ostensibly to protect the Tutsi population of eastern DR Congo who have long complained of persecution and discrimination.
However, Rwanda’s critics accuse it of using the M23 to plunder eastern DR Congo for minerals such as gold, cobalt and tantalum, which are used to make mobile phones and batteries for electric cars.
Last month, DR Congo said it was suing Apple over the use of such “blood minerals,” prompting the tech giant to say it had stopped getting supplies from the country.
