Red Cross staff load bodies onto a lorry bound for the morgue of the hospital in the north of Goma.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy replaced the commander of the eastern front, the most heated battlefield of the Ukraine war, after Russian forces captured another strategic town there.

Rwanda-backed rebels claimed on Monday they captured eastern Congo’s strategic city of Goma, the hub of a region containing trillions of dollars in mineral wealth that remains largely untapped.

In 2012, when M23 rebels appeared poised to seize control of a major city in eastern Congo, western countries suspended aid to put pressure on Rwanda to withdraw its support.

Ukraine is deeply concerned about the escalation of hostilities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Rebels, supported by Rwanda, have entered the largest city in the eastern region, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Vladimir Putin grabbed Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine, and pretended he had not. As a figleaf he used local separatist forces, which Russia armed, supplied and directed. These forces, he claimed,

After a lightning offensive, M23 rebels now control Goma, a large city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Missiles are flying above civilians' homes as fighters fire heavy artillery in Goma's city centre, an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson tells the BBC. "It is a very densely populated area... there are lots of victims in terms of civilians, Myriam Favier says.

President of the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Thursday that his troopers are fighting an insurgence by the Rwandan-backed militant group M23 which recently captured swaths of land in the east.

A rebel alliance claimed the capture of the biggest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich eastern region this week, pushing back against resistance from government troops backed by regional and UN intervention forces.

The Rwanda-backed M23 group is one of about 100 armed factions vying for a foothold in eastern Congo in one of Africa’s longest conflicts, displacing 4.5 million people and creating what the U.N. called “one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth."

Ukraine's foreign ministry summoned Slovakia's ambassador in Kyiv on Thursday to reject accusations that it is meddling in its neighbour's internal affairs and to accuse Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico of being a "mouthpiece" for Russia.