The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has held a symbolic burial for 22 people killed in a drone strike in eastern Congo
The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group on Thursday held a symbolic burial for 22 people killed in a drone strike earlier this month in the North Kivu province in eastern Congo.
M23 claimed that the attack, which targeted their military positions in the Masisi territory on Jan. 2, was carried out by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) and their allies.
The rebel group said all the victims are civilians, a claim questioned by at least one expert who said some may have been combatants killed in fighting.
The FARDC has not commented on the attack. Patrick Muyaya, the spokesperson for the Congolese government, said in a post on X that Thursday’s funeral was “the height of indecency and inhumanity.”
“The mass graves, the bodies abandoned by the roadside, the villages emptied of their inhabitants“, he said. “No ceremony, no staged event, no fabricated narrative can erase the reality of these crimes, nor absolve the father #Rwanda and the #M23 who planned, ordered, and executed them.”
The burial comes as the rebel group engages in ongoing negotiations with the Congolese government to end decades of fighting.
The ceremony was held at the Unity Stadium in Goma, the provincial capital, in the presence of M23 administration officials, representatives of religious groups and hundreds of family members of the victims.
