The US announced a humanitarian truce between Kinshasa and the M23 rebel group on July 5.
Two children and two teenagers were killed in a bombing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), local sources told the AFP news agency.
The United States announced a humanitarian truce on July 5 between Kinshasa and the M23 rebel group operating in eastern DRC. It was supposed to last until July 19, but fighting broke out on Friday.
A spokesman for one of the armed groups supporting DRC forces said the fighting took place 70 kilometers (43 miles) northwest of the North Kivu provincial capital, Goma.
On Monday, fighting reached the town of Bweremana, about 15 kilometers west of Goma, where the deadly bombing took place.
The dead included two children from the same family, according to Innocent Mwitehofu Mumbara, a local civil society leader. The four victims were aged two, three, 16 and 18, Mumbara added.
A mother and her four-year-old son were among those injured, Bweremana police commissioner Paulin Ilunga said, claiming the bomb “came from the hills where the M23 is”.
Confirming the deaths of four people in the attack, a hospital source told AFP that five more were admitted with serious injuries.
The DRC has faced political instability and armed violence since 1996, with an estimated six million people killed since the beginning of the conflict.
Since late 2021, the M23, supported by Rwandan army units, has conquered vast swaths of territory in North Kivu, going so far as to almost completely encircle Goma.
According to a Human Rights Watch report, the M23 allegedly executed dozens of villagers and militia members between November 2022 and April 2023, burying them in mass graves in the village of Kishishe, North Kivu.
O report says that the M23 has committed illegal killings, rapes and other war crimes since late 2022, exacerbating the terrible humanitarian crisis in the country. A total of 171 civilians were executed in the last 10 days of November alone, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
At the end of June, the M23 and the Rwandan army took several towns in the territory of Lubero, in northern North Kivu, following the collapse of the Congolese army and its auxiliary militias.
Almost 50 soldiers were sentenced to death in the following days for “running away from the enemy”.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
