Rwandan-backed rebel forces have captured the town of Masisi in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to various reports.
This is the second city controlled by the M23 movement in as many days in the mineral-rich North Kivu province.
The group has controlled vast swathes of eastern DRC since 2021, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Angola is trying to mediate talks between President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame. But this collapsed last month.
“We learned with horror that the M23 movement had taken control of Masisi centre,” Alexis Bahunga, a member of the North Kivu provincial council, told AFP.
He said this “plunges the region into a serious humanitarian crisis” and urged the government to strengthen the army's capacity in the region.
A resident told AFP that the M23 movement held a meeting of the town's residents, saying they “came to liberate the country.”
The Congolese authorities have not yet commented on the loss of the city.
Masisi, with a population of about 40,000, is the capital of the province of the same name.
It is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, which the M23 movement briefly occupied in 2012.
On Friday, the M23 movement took control of the nearby town of Katale.
Last year, there were concerns that The March 23 Movement will advance again towards Gomaa city with a population of about two million people.
However, there was a lull in the fighting until early December when fighting resumed.
In July, Rwanda did not deny A A UN report says it has about 4,000 soldiers Fighting alongside the M23 movement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Congolese government was accused of not doing enough to address decades of conflict in the east of the country. Rwanda previously said that authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were working with some of those responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide against ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The M23 movement, formed as an offshoot of another rebel group, began working in 2012 ostensibly to protect the Tutsi population in eastern DRC who had long complained of persecution and discrimination.
However, Rwanda's critics accuse it of using the M23 movement to plunder eastern DRC's minerals such as gold, cobalt and tantalum, which are used to make mobile phones and electric car batteries.
Last month, the Democratic Republic of Congo said it had sued Apple over the use of these “blood minerals”, prompting the tech giant to say it had stopped sourcing supplies from the country.
