The United States had announced a humanitarian truce between Kinshasa and the M23 rebel group on July 5.
Two children and two teenagers have been killed in a bombing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), local sources told the AFP news agency.
On July 5, the United States announced a humanitarian truce between Kinshasa and the M23 rebel group operating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The truce was due to last until July 19, but fighting broke out on Friday.
A spokesman for one of the armed groups supporting DRC forces said the fighting occurred 70 kilometres (43 miles) northwest of the North Kivu provincial capital, Goma.
By Monday, fighting had reached the town of Bweremana, about 15 kilometres west of Goma, where the deadly bombing took place.
Among the dead were two children from the same family, according to Innocent Mwitehofu Mumbara, a local civil society leader. The four victims were aged two, three, 16 and 18, Mumbara added.
A mother and her four-year-old son were among the wounded, Bweremana Police Commissioner Paulin Ilunga said, adding that the shell “had come from the hills where the M23 is.”
Confirming the death of four people in the attack, a hospital source told AFP that five more were admitted with serious injuries.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been facing political instability and armed violence since 1996, with an estimated six million people killed since the conflict began.
Since late 2021, the M23, supported by Rwandan army units, had seized large swathes of territory in North Kivu, even going so far as to almost completely encircle Goma.
According to a Human Rights Watch report, the M23 allegedly executed dozens of villagers and militia members between November 2022 and April 2023, burying them in mass graves in the village of Kishishe in North Kivu.
The report notes that the M23 has committed unlawful killings, rape and other war crimes since late 2022, exacerbating the country's dire humanitarian crisis. A total of 171 civilians were executed in the last 10 days of November alone, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
In late June, the M23 and the Rwandan army captured several towns in Lubero territory, north of North Kivu, following the collapse of the Congolese army and its auxiliary militias.
Nearly 50 soldiers were sentenced to death in the following days for “fleeing the enemy.”
