GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Rebel fighters, singing and brandishing weapons, pulled out of Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern border city of Goma on Saturday, raising hopes regional peace efforts could advance negotiations to end the insurgency.
Reuters reported that the rebel withdrawal from Goma on Lake Kivu, a strategic hub in the country’s war-scarred eastern borderlands, was agreed in a deal brokered by presidents of the Great Lakes states under Uganda’s leadership a week ago.
Goma’s fall on November 20 to the Tutsi-led M23 rebel movement which routed United Nations-backed government forces triggered a diplomatic scramble to prevent a wider escalation of the eight-month-old rebellion in the conflict-prone region.
The rebels had said they would fight to topple Congo’s President Joseph Kabila and march on the capital Kinshasa, 1,600 km (1,000 miles) to the west. U.N. experts accuse Rwanda and Uganda of supporting the revolt, a charge both strongly deny. In the centre of Goma, blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers from Uruguay in white armored vehicles watched as camouflage-clad M23 fighters scrambled on to the back of flatbed trucks with battered suitcases and other belongings before driving off. “We are leaving today,” M23’s military chief Colonel Sultani Makenga told reporters.
Residents lined the streets leading out of the city to watch as the truckloads of singing rebels drove out, heading for previously agreed positions 20 km (13 miles) north of Goma from where M23 launched its lightening offensive two weeks ago.