By David Lewis and Sonia Rolley
Uganda has deployed more than 1,000 extra soldiers into east Congo in the last week near an area where the Kinshasa government is fighting M23 rebels, four diplomatic and U.N. sources said, heightening fears of a regional escalation.
Residents said they were moving towards the conflict zone.
The Rwandan-backed M23 recently captured regional capital Goma in an anarchic and mineral-rich part of Democratic Republic of Congo where wars in 1996-1997 and 1998-2003 drew in outside nations and killed millions, mostly from hunger and disease.
The extra Ugandan deployment north of Goma would raise its numbers there – officially to back Congo President Felix Tshisekedi’s army against another rebel force – to about 4,000-5,000, according to U.N. sources.
Rwanda also has troops operating in east Congo.
Uganda has been helping Congo fight the Islamist Allied Defence Forces since 2021, and the new deployment of between
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