(Reuters) -Rwanda escorted the troops of a Southern African force through Rwandan territory to Tanzania on Tuesday as they pulled out from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s foreign minister and army spokesperson said.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which groups 16 states, said in mid-March it had terminated the mandate of its mission and would begin a phased withdrawal of its force, known as SAMIDRC, from Congo.
The force was sent to assist Kinshasa’s fight against rebel groups in Congo’s eastern borderlands in December 2023, prompting protests by the Rwandan government, which said the deployment would aggravate the conflict.
“The presence of SAMIDRC troops was always a complicating factor in the conflict, and today’s start of withdrawal marks a positive step in support of the ongoing peace process,” Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said on X.
Many of SAMIDRC’s troops, thought to number several hundred, sought shelter in U.N. peacekeeping bases after Goma, eastern Congo’s largest city, fell to Rwandan-backed M23 rebels in February.
Rwandan army spokesperson Ronald Rwivanga said a portion of those troops departed on Tuesday, and that their convoy would arrive in neighbouring Tanzania in “a few hours”.
A witness said Rwandan army and military police personnel escorted some 20 vehicles over the Congo border into the Rwandan town of Gisenyi. The convoy carried what appeared to be military equipment along with Tanzanian and South African soldiers, the witness said.
An ambulance within the convoy had SAMIDRC signage on it, and the drivers told bystanders the vehicles were going to Tanzania, the witness added.
An M23 source said only half of the SAMIDRC force in Goma left Congo on Tuesday. The remainder would follow later, he said.
M23 have seized eastern Congo’s two biggest cities since January in an escalation of a long-running conflict rooted in the spillover into Congo of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and the struggle for control of Congo’s vast mineral resources.
Their offensive has killed thousands of people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Rwanda denies U.N. allegations that it backs the M23 with arms and troops, saying its forces are acting in self-defence against Congo’s army and allied militias.
In March 2024 Rwanda asked the African Union and its partners not to support SAMIDRC, accusing the force of fighting alongside a Congolese government coalition that included fighters linked to the Rwanda genocide.
Mediation efforts, most recently by Angola and Qatar, have so far failed to end the conflict, although Congo and Rwanda pledged to come up with a draft peace deal by May 2 in an agreement signed in Washington last Friday.
(Reporting by Congo Newsroom; writing by Hereward Holland, editing by Bate Felix, William Maclean and Mark Heinrich)
