Streets were deserted, businesses closed and troops fled the eastern Congolese city of Uvira on Wednesday, a day after a Rwanda-backed rebel group reached the city’s outskirts, prompting Burundi to seal its frontier, in the biggest escalation in months of the long-running war.
The M23's assault comes less than a year after the anti-government armed group seized control of Goma and Bukavu, two key provincial capitals in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been plagued by conflict for three decades.
Its latest rapid advance, launched on Dec. 1 in South Kivu province against a Congolese army backed by Burundian forces, also comes just days after the signing of an agreement aimed at ending the conflict brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Burundi, which neighbors both the DRC and Rwanda, views the prospect of Uvira falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat.
Uvira sits across Lake Tanganyika from the Burundian economic capital Bujumbura, with only around 20 kilometers (12 miles) between the two cities.
