A woman balances a sack of flour on her head as she crosses a road in Uvira on December 9, 2025. Intense fighting is taking place on Tuesday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with the M23 group, supported by the Rwandan army, continuing its rapid advance towards Uvira, a strategic Congolese city located near the border with neighboring Burundi and now under threat. The anti-government armed group and the Rwandan soldiersestimated at 6,000 to 7,000 on Congolese soil according to UN expertswere reportedly only about fifteen kilometers north of the city, home to several hundred thousand inhabitants, as of Tuesday morning, according to security and military sources cited by AFP. (Photo by AFP)
December 9, 2025
More than 30,000 flee eastern DR Congo for Burundi—sources
NAIROBI, Kenya(AFP)—More than 30,000 people have fled eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for Burundi in a week, sources told AFP on Tuesday after the Rwanda-backed M23 militia closed in on the strategic city of Uvira near the Burundian border.
A Burundian administrative source told AFP on condition of anonymity he had recorded more than 8,000 daily arrivals over the past two days, and 30,000 arrivals in one week, a figure a UN refugee agency source confirmed.
The Rwanda-backed M23 offensive comes nearly a year after the group seized control of Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in eastern DRC, a strategic region rich in natural resources and plagued by conflict for 30 years.
