Fighting between Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) forces and the M23 rebels has continued in the east of the DRC despite a ceasefire scheduled to take effect this Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Angola\u2019s President Joao Lourenco called for the ceasefire last week after holding talks with other African leaders.<\/p>\n
The clashes were reported in villages in eastern DRC\u2019s South Kivu province. Locals say government forces and the M23 rebels attacked each other\u2019s positions in the Luvungi and Bikenge areas.<\/p>\n
Both sides have accused each other of attacking first. The fighting has violated a ceasefire that Lourenco called last week.<\/p>\n
It has also undermined hopes of restoring peace in the conflict-torn region. Last October, the DRC government and the M23 rebels signed an agreement in Qatar to monitor a permanent ceasefire.<\/p>\n
But fighting erupted just days after the signing. Qatar and the African Union condemned the escalation and urged the warring parties to cease hostilities.<\/p>\n
The United States has warned that any party violating the ceasefire will face sanctions.<\/p>\n
The M23 rebels say they are fighting to protect their community of the DRC Tutsis from attacks by a rival Hutu militia backed by the DRC government.<\/p>\n
The DRC denied the accusation and blamed Rwanda for supporting the rebels to plunder its minerals,\u00a0 a charge Kigali also denied. The fighting has caused a major humanitarian crisis in eastern DRC.<\/p>\n
The European Union has allocated more than $96 million in humanitarian aid to support populations affected by the conflict.<\/p>\n
The funding will provide life-saving services to vulnerable communities in eastern DRC and refugees in Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania.<\/p>\n
–SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13641,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-23940","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Angola\u2019s President Joao Lourenco called for the ceasefire last week.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Angola\u2019s President Joao Lourenco called for the ceasefire last week.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26764,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23940\/revisions\/26764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}