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NBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Hidden invasion: Rwanda's covert war in the Congo
Open secret From the start, Rwanda has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal its intervention in the Kivu provinces in eastern Congo, which went from a couple of hundred soldiers in 2021 to an estimated 5,000 today. But there have been lapses in Rwanda's secrecy. In May 2022, Congolese forces announced they had captured two Rwandan soldiers who had entered the country. Rwanda denied this, claiming the soldiers were kidnapped across the border. NBC News obtained a Rwandan military report that admitted that these soldiers were captured while taking part in an M23 attack on barracks at Rumangabo military base. The internal report says members of the Rwanda Defence Force crossing the border were supposed to leave cellphones behind and strip identifying insignia from their uniforms. It recommends punishment for the soldiers' commander for failing to ensure the captured soldiers did so. In a bid to remove witnesses, Rwandan soldiers forced Congolese villagers to evacuate areas they occupied, according to a contractor hired to provide intelligence for the Congolese military. Operations like this drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. 'This is not business as usual in the DRC,' Antoine Sagot-Priez, DRC country director for the aid agency Concern Worldwide, said in March, commenting on the mass displacement. 'We need people to know what is happening here.' These villagers ended up living in 17 camps around the city of Goma, the capital of Congo's North Kivu province, that would eventually swell to hold 400,000 to 500,000 people. Reports drawn up by the same contractor state that Rwandan forces were moving their mortars in and out of Congo — sometimes each day — apparently to avoid detection. Rwandan soldiers also often don outfits usually worn by the M23 rebels. Much of the information used in this report was compiled by Western military experts, who included former French army officers, Romanians, Poles and Bulgarians, hired by Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi in 2022 when he realized his army was disastrously losing ground. They were assigned the task of protecting cities in the east and providing Congo's artillery with key information — thanks to a small fleet of Chinese drones. In March 2023, these new hires helped turn the tables on the Rwandans attacking the town of Sake, west of Goma, by hitting their mortar positions with Sukhoi fighter jets. The entire Rwandan force in Congo withdrew the following day. Military contractors believe this was the moment Rwanda — one of Africa's poorest states and heavily dependent on foreign aid — went on an international military shopping spree, placing orders in Poland and Turkey for sophisticated anti-missile systems, drones and signal-jamming equipment. Then in late 2023, Rwandan forces began returning to Congo. This time the numbers were 10 times higher than before — 3,000 to 5,000 men, according to the same military contractor. The Congolese army put its new drones to devastating use. Satellite imagery shows a sudden, dramatic increase in the number of graves at Kanombe Military Cemetery, Rwanda's main military burial ground in the capital, Kigali. It expanded by some 350 graves between mid-2023 and early 2024, according to a manual count carried out by NBC News. The images also show that from late 2021 to today, the cemetery has added 900 graves, even though the country says it is not engaged in any military conflict in Congo. Rwanda's government spokesperson declined to comment on the fresh graves, saying: 'Speculation about a military cemetery in Kigali has no basis in reality.' The DRC's air superiority did not last long. According to senior Congolese army officers, Rwanda used the opportunity presented by a U.S.-negotiated truce to install Chinese-made Yitian anti-missile systems in Congo. The addition in early 2024 of GPS-jamming equipment turned the war's tide, making it nearly impossible for the DRC's hired contractors to deploy their drone fleet. 'The new equipment changed everything,' said Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, a Congolese army spokesman. 'When we were asked by the Americans for a ceasefire to calm things down, the Rwandans used it as a chance to bring in these systems.'
Time of India
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Three Rwandan soldiers killed in Mozambique ambush: Army
Representative Image (AI-generated) KIGALI: An ambush in Mozambique killed three Rwandan soldiers over the weekend and wounded six, a Rwandan army spokesperson said said in 2021 that it would deploy roughly 1,000 members of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) and the Rwanda National Police (RNP) to Mozambique, plagued by a long-running insurgency."It is true our soldiers in Mozambique were attacked in an ambush, in which three were killed," spokesperson Ronald Rwivanga said, referring to the May 3 incident in Cabo Delgado province "It is a combat zone and some of these incidences are expected, but the situation was handled," he said, adding that those wounded are "recovering well".The gas-rich Cabo Delgado province has in recent months been the target of successive attacks by militants linked to the Islamic State is the latest uptick in clashes in an area blighted for years by jihadist violence that has killed thousands of people, uprooted over a million from their homes and forced the suspension of a giant gas exploration project by TotalEnergies.
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Rwandan troops ‘dying in large numbers in DRC', despite official denials of role
Hundreds of Rwandan troops have been killed during covert operations in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), contradicting claims from Kigali that its soldiers are not involved in the conflict there. Multiple intelligence, military and diplomatic sources say that 'very significant' numbers of soldiers from the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) have died supporting an offensive by M23 rebels in DRC. Satellite imagery of one military cemetery in the Rwandan capital of Kigali indicates at least 600 graves have been dug since the M23 – backed by RDF troops – restarted operations within DRC three years ago. Two high-ranking intelligence officials with knowledge of the RDF say the true losses sustained by Rwanda probably run into the 'thousands', but pinning down a definitive figure is challenging. Another senior source says a number of dead Rwandan troops were secretly buried in 'mass graves' in DRC when it was impossible to return their bodies across the border. They say that families were given empty coffins when corpses could not be returned. 'Not all soldiers that perished in DRC were able to be repatriated, especially in areas under a lot of fire. Some were buried in mass graves,' they add. Rwandan casualties are so high that a new wing has been built at Kigali's military hospital to deal with them. Its mortuary is full, the source says. Rwanda continues to deny its forces have crossed into DRC. It has repeatedly denied involvement in supporting the M23 rebels and has never acknowledged its troops have died in the conflict. UN experts, however, say the Rwandan army is in 'de facto control' of M23 rebels, who last month seized the city of Goma, capital of DRC's North Kivu province, and control a swathe of DRC equivalent to almost half the size of Rwanda itself. Revelations concerning Rwanda's military death toll will intensify pressure on Kigali to come clean about its role in the conflict before a crisis summit attended by the Rwandan and DRC presidents, Paul Kagame and Felix Tshisekedi, respectively, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Saturday. Diplomatic sources say the true number of Rwandan dead – evidence of sustained frontline involvement – would be acutely damaging for Kagame. Emmanuel Ngabo, who runs a group in France called ARC Urunana Nyarwanda France (Rwandan Alliance for Change), says he has received numerous indications from grieving parents that large numbers of Rwandans have been killed. 'There are so many bodies needing to be processed. There is such a queue of families waiting [for burial] that they are only allowed 30 minutes at the graveside.' Ngabo, not his real name, adds: 'The coffins are always closed, either because the soldier is so badly injured or burnt he is unrecognisable, or because there is nobody inside the box. 'We hear that privates are often buried where they fall in Congo: officers are brought back for burial in Kanombe [military cemetery in Kigali].' Satellite images of Kanombe from August 2021 – before the start of the M23 conflict – and another taken on 15 December 2024, before the rebels seized Goma on 27 January, appear to show a dramatic increase in the number of graves there. Two areas in particular indicate a proliferation of graves since the conflict began. One, in the cemetery's north, appears to show about 100 new graves, doubling the number in that part of it. To the south, at least 500 new graves can be seen. A significant number have probably been dug since the image was taken at the end of last year. Cloud cover, however, thwarted attempts to obtain a more recent image of Kanombe. Last month marked a bloodier phase of the conflict, with a renewed M23 and RDF push seizing the towns of Minova and Sake, as well as Goma. The UN says the battle for Goma left at least 2,900 people dead. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion An intelligence source confirms increased RDF deaths. 'We have been receiving increasing reports of casualties in military hospitals and burial sites,' they say. A military source adds that the capability of the DRC army – and effective use of drones and airpower – would have killed many. 'I'm not surprised to see the increase in graves. When you have aircraft dropping bombs on troops, it claims a lot of lives,' they say. Although thousands of Rwandan troops are also deployed in Mozambique and Central African Republic, sources say RDF fatalities in those states are 'barely a handful'. UN experts estimated in December that up to 4,000 Rwandan troops were on the ground in DRC but intelligence sources believe the figure is far higher, with possibly more than 7,000 there. Rwandan families approached by the Guardian for comment on the conflict would not comment on the loss of their children. However, a Rwandan exiled in Europe said they had spoken to two families in the past week who had lost sons in the fighting. They said that funerals, arranged by the military, were being conducted far more quickly than normal. 'It happens really fast. Family friends don't get to see the deceased, as is normal in our culture,' they say, adding that the families were not told how their son died, just that it was 'on the battlefield'. Ngabo, who is exiled in France, adds: 'I've published so many funeral notices for Rwandan soldiers killed in Congo.' Grieving families are angry, he says. 'Some were called by their sons, who said: 'We're leaving for Congo tomorrow, pray for me.' Others didn't even know their sons had been sent to fight in Congo when they got the phone call telling them to go to Kanombe to pick up the body.' Although Rwanda has been tight-lipped about casualties across its western border, Kagame referenced RDF deaths in his recent end-of-year address, promising families that their 'sacrifices shall never be in vain'. A diplomatic source said his comments indicated the casualty rate was becoming a 'very real issue'. The Rwandan government has been contacted for comment.
