FILE PHOTO: Corneille Nangaa, leader of the AFC rebel alliance that also includes M23, addresses a press conference at the Serena Hotel in Goma, North Kivu province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Arlette Bashizi/File Photo
(Reuters) -Crowds fled and people were killed and wounded as gunfire and explosions rang out at a mass rally held by rebel leader Corneille Nangaa in Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern city of Bukavu on Thursday, residents said.
People ran through the streets, some bleeding and carrying limp bodies, video showed. Residents said they saw dead bodies, but there was no immediate information on the number of casualties.
Nangaa told Reuters by phone that Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi had ordered the attack, without providing evidence. There was no immediate comment from the government
Nangaa said that he was not wounded and other senior members of the rebel grouping - which has battled Congo's army and seized swathes of territory in the east since the beginning of the year - were safe.
Congo, the United Nations and Western powers say neighbouring Rwanda is backing Nangaa's M23 rebel group - accusations Rwanda denies. The rebel advance has stirred fears of a regional war that could draw in Congo's neighbours.
In his speech before the shooting started, Nangaa told a crowd of thousands that M23 had come to Bukavu to bring security. The group has controlled the city since February 16.
"There will be special units and patrols that will take place in all the communes," said Nangaa, who was making his first public appearance in Bukavu since the takeover.
The shooting started at the end of the meeting, one resident said. "There was shooting in all directions. We don't know what happened. There are injured people, dead people, I don't know."
M23 has been trying to demonstrate that it can restore order in the territory it has captured from Congo's army, and has re-opened ports and schools.
This M23 advance is the gravest escalation in more than a decade of the long-running conflict in eastern Congo, rooted in the spillover of Rwanda's 1994 genocide into Congo and the struggle for control of Congo's vast minerals resources.
Rwanda has said it is defending itself against the threat from a Hutu militia, which it says is fighting with the Congolese military.
(Reporting by Congo newsroom and Sonia Rolley in Paris; Writing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Portia Crowe; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Andrew Heavens)
