The Congolese army reached the camp at around noon, secured the stockpile of weapons left there and posted guards. It was there that the Congolese troops were approached by Jacques Leon Liripa, a Congolese soldier who had been captured by the rebels in 2012, and spent more than a year as a prisoner of war. He said the M23 rebels deserted the area on Sunday afternoon, and he was able to break out of jail. He spent the night in the forest, emerging only when he saw his former colleagues.
Martin Kobler, the U.N. special representative for Congo, briefed the U.N. Security Council and told them "We are witnessing the military end of the M23," according to French U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud.
"We hope that the rebel movement has been chastised, and will go back to the negotiating table," Araud said.
The Congolese government will quickly restore administration, said the governor of the North Kivu province. "I confirm the fall of Rumangabo," said Julien Paluku. "We have just held two meetings in order to discuss how to uplift the population ... and we are announcing the restoration of the civil service within the next 24 hours."
The M23 rebels are just the latest to take over a swath of the country's volatile east. Their members belonged to a now-defunct rebel army which agreed on March 23, 2009 to integrate the national army, in return for abandoning the conflict. These same soldiers mutinied in 2012, claiming that the Congolese had not fulfilled its promises under their accord.
At first ignored, the M23 rebels were buoyed by what a United Nations panel of experts tasked with investigating the conflict said were arms, money and troops from neighboring Rwanda, Congo's smaller but militarily powerful neighbor to the east. In several reports, the panel documented the movement of entire battalions of troops from Rwanda to Congo to fight alongside the M23, travelling across the unpatrolled jungle footpaths separating the two nations.
Fighting between the two sides has flared and ebbed throughout the past year, each time ending with stalled peace talks, hosted in Kampala, the capital of neighboring Uganda.
Former Senator Russell Feingold, the United States' special envoy for the Great Lakes and Congo, told reporters in Paris after a trip to the region that the two sides need to return to the negotiating table.
"My belief and the belief of the U.S. government and the larger international community is that this is not a situation for a military solution," he said. "Our belief is that the best thing now is to have the fighting stop so in the next few days an agreement in Kampala can be finalized."
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Mwanamilongo contributed to this report from Kinshasa, Congo. Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, Peter James Spielmann at the United Nations, and Greg Keller in Paris contributed to this report.
