The military spokesperson for the M23 rebel group, Willy Ngoma, was killed in an army drone strike in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, a regional diplomat, a senior rebel official and a Western adviser to the government said.<\/p>\n
The killing comes as\u00a0Qatar\u2011mediated ceasefire efforts\u00a0continue, with Kinshasa and M23 having\u00a0signed agreements in Doha to establish a joint ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism involving Qatar, the United States and the African Union as observers.<\/p>\n
M23, which the United Nations says is backed by Rwanda, controls large swathes of North and South Kivu provinces after a rapid offensive last year in which the rebels seized the strategic cities of Goma and Bukavu.<\/p>\n
The attack happened near Rubaya, in North Kivu, at around 3 a.m. (0100 GMT), and came after several days of sustained drone attacks on the area by the Congolese army, the senior M23 official told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Rubaya is a strategic coltan-mining hub that produces around 15% of the world’s supply, making it a key financial stronghold for the M23 rebels.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Congolese presidency declined to comment and a spokesperson for Congo’s army did not immediately respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The military spokesperson for the M23 rebel group, Willy Ngoma, was killed in an army drone strike in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, a regional diplomat, a senior rebel official and a Western adviser to the government said. The killing comes as\u00a0Qatar\u2011mediated ceasefire efforts\u00a0continue, with Kinshasa and M23 having\u00a0signed agreements in Doha to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":7,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1129],"tags":[3016,1621,1469,3248],"class_list":["post-19987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-security","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-m23-rebels","tag-north-kivu","tag-rubaya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19989,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19987\/revisions\/19989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}