KINSHASA: A team of UN peacekeepers arrived in the flashpoint eastern Democratic Republic of Congo town of Uvira to prepare the deployment of a ceasefire?monitoring mission, the force said Tuesday.
Eastern DRC has been ravaged by three decades of conflict and faces renewed violence following the 2021 resurgence of the M23 armed group, backed by Rwanda and its army.
The M23 seized large swathes of territory in the east and launched an offensive in December on Uvira, a strategic town in South Kivu province near the border with Burundi.
The assault drew condemnation from the United States, which has mediated a fragile peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda.
That agreement provided for the UN’s DRC peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to carry out a field-monitoring operation with a view to implementing a permanent ceasefire.
