Goma (DR Congo) (AFP) - Rwanda-backed fighters controlled most of the besieged DR Congo city of Goma on Wednesday as residents slowly emerged from their homes after days of deadly fighting in the key mineral trading hub.

The M23 armed group and Rwandan troops have seized the airport and most of the centre and neighbourhoods since marching into the eastern provincial capital on Sunday after a lightning offensive.

With international pressure rising to end the crisis, a diplomatic push fell apart when Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi declined to attend talks on Wednesday with his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame.

The intense fighting has heightened a humanitarian crisis in a turbulent region, rich in minerals and plagued for decades by armed groups backed by regional rivals in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Three days of clashes have left more than 100 dead and nearly 1,000 wounded, according to an AFP tally from the city’s overflowing hospitals.

One medic told AFP that many bodies were still to be recovered in the city of one million people wedged between Lake Kivu and the Rwandan border.

After fighting eased on Tuesday, only M23 fighters and Rwandan forces were visible on the streets.

People started emerging on Wednesday after days trapped inside homes without electricity. Some swam in Lake Kivu as sporadic gunshots echoed in the distance.

“It was a bit frightening with the gunshots we were hearing,” student Merdi Kambelenge told AFP.

“But, as far as we could tell, it has already stabilised despite the fact that there’s no power… we’re cut off from the world.”

The Tutsi-led M23 initially claimed it had taken Goma on Sunday, but it has since been unclear how much of the city it controlled. Senior M23 officials told the media they would make a statement on Wednesday.

- M23 advance ‘will continue’ -

Rwanda’s ambassador-at-large for the Great Lakes region Vincent Karega told AFP the M23 advance “will continue” into neighbouring South Kivu province.

It was even possible the fighters could push beyond the country’s east, because all of the Congolese “forces and military capabilities were concentrated in Goma,” Karega said.

Before the M23 started its march on Goma last month, Angola-mediated talks between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda were called off at the last minute when Kagame failed to turn up.

Kenya had announced both leaders would attend a virtual crisis summit on Wednesday, but Congolese state media said Tshisekedi would not take part.

On Tuesday, protesters in the capital Kinshasa attacked the embassies of various nations they accused of not stepping in to halt the chaos in the east.

Brussels Airlines, the flag carrier of DRC’s former colonial ruler Belgium, on Wednesday cancelled flights to and from Kinshasa.

More than 500,000 people have been forced from their homes since the start of the year, the United Nations has said, warning of food shortages, looted aid and the potential spread of disease.

The UN, United States, China and the European Union have all called on Rwanda to withdraw its forces from the region.

At a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, the DRC called on countries “to have the courage to do what is right”.

Dozens of Romanian private military contractors were among those fleeing the violence in Goma to the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi.

“We weren’t on a battlefield, we were here to train and help with artillery,” one who only gave the name Emile told AFP.

“What I learned is that anything can happen, I came I did my work and now I am happy to go back and be with my family.”

- ‘Blood minerals’ -

The vast central African country has gold and other minerals such as cobalt, a key ingredient in top-range batteries including for smartphones and electric cars.

The DRC has accused Rwanda of waging the offensive to profit from the region’s abundant minerals – a claim backed by UN experts who say Kigali has thousands of troops in its neighbour and “de facto control” over the M23.

Rwanda has denied the accusations.

Kagame has never admitted military involvement, saying Rwanda’s aim is to tackle an armed group, the FDLR, created by former Hutu leaders who massacred Tutsis during the genocide.

The UN’s mission in the DRC has warned the fighting risks reigniting ethnic conflicts dating back to the genocide and said it had documented “at least one case of ethnically motivated lynching”.

The M23 briefly occupied Goma at the end of 2012 before being defeated by Congolese forces and the UN the following year.

Last month, Kinshasa filed a criminal case against the European subsidiaries of Apple, accusing the US company of buying “blood minerals” from Rwanda originally mined in eastern DRC that eventually end up in tech devices.

Apple has insisted it verifies the origin of the materials it uses.

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