Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has vowed “a vigorous and coordinated response” against a rebel alliance that has besieged swaths of the nation’s mineral-rich east and forced hundreds of local troops and foreign mercenaries to surrender.

South Africa often uses its diplomatic heft to position itself as defender of the "global south" on the world stage, but the deaths of 13 of its soldiers in eastern Congo fighting have exposed an inability to project hard power in its own backyard.

Rwanda-backed rebels claimed on Monday they captured eastern Congo’s strategic city of Goma, the hub of a region containing trillions of dollars in mineral wealth that remains largely untapped.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for a urgent cease-fire in the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo saying Washington was "deeply troubled" by a recent escalation in the fighting.

The Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have released captured Romanian mercenaries who were fighting with the Congolese army. As they passed a border, they were chastised by Willy Ngoma, who tapped them mockingly one by one.

If this council does not condemn, this will go down in history as a time of powerlessness and indifference of the Security Council,' says country’s foreign minister - Anadolu Ajansı

Democratic Republic of Congo - A million displaced, one story at a time: Protecting women and girls in the heart of conflict

Congolese rebels and allied Rwandan troops claimed on Monday to have captured the mineral-rich city of Goma, as thousands fled fighting that killed at least 13 peacekeepers over the weekend...

Strewn with rubble from mortar and artillery fire, the eastern DR Congo city of Goma awoke on Thursday to a new abnormal -- hiding from bandits and counting the dead.

The Rwandan-backed M23 group is advancing further south in DR Congo, local and humanitarian sources told AFP Thursday, after the group vowed it would march to the capital Kinshasa.

On January 28, a mass demonstration took place in Kinshasa in support of the Congolese army and against the policy of several countries, including France, towards Rwanda. It was accompanied by attacks