Rwanda-backed rebels say they will withdraw from eastern town they seized last week after request by US mediators.Published On 16 Dec 202516 Dec 2025Click here to share on social mediashare2ShareThe M23 armed group says it has agreed to a request from the United States to withdraw from the key town of Uvira in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after seizing it last week.Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) rebel coalition, which includes the M23 group, posted a signed statement on X on Tuesday that confirmed fighters would withdraw from the town located in South Kivu province, near the border with Burundi, “as per United States mediation request”.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listReporting from Uvira, Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani said “nothing had changed” as of Tuesday morning, with M23 fighters still spotted in the town.He noted the coalition had warned that the Congolese army and its allies had “exploited similar withdrawals to retake territory and target civilians perceived as sympathetic to the rebels”.The Rwanda-backed militia seized the strategic town last week, imperilling a US-brokered peace agreement between Kinshasa and Kigali signed just days before, and a framework agreement for a peace deal signed by the group and the Congolese government in Qatar’s capital, Doha.The coalition called the move a “unilateral trust-building measure” aimed at giving the “Doha peace process the maximum chance to succeed”, calling on “guarantors of the peace process” to oversee demilitarisation and protection of the town’s population and infrastructure, and to monitor the ceasefire with “the deployment of a neutral force”.US ready to ‘take action’The Doha framework deal was agreed in November, establishing a roadmap to stop the deadly fighting and improve the humanitarian situation in the DRC. It was built on a declaration of principles signed in July on the monitoring of an eventual ceasefire that did not tackle questions over the M23’s withdrawal from the country. A …
