Three Tanzanian soldiers killed in Democratic Republic of Congo

Three Tanzanian soldiers were killed and three others wounded when hostile mortar fire landed near their camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said on Monday.

They were part of a Southern African peacekeeping force deployed in December last year to help government troops battling M23 rebels in the ongoing conflict in the restive eastern DRC.

The force includes soldiers from regional military heavyweight South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi.

It is being reported that the mortar attack took place last Thursday and that a ceremony to honour the dead was held at SADC headquarters in the provincial capital, Goma, on Monday.

SADC also said that a soldier from South Africa had died in a hospital while being treated for unspecified health problems.

The force suffered its first losses in mid-February when two South African soldiers were killed by mortars at a camp about 20 kilometres from the provincial capital, Goma.

A Congolese security source, who asked not to be named, said the Tanzanian casualties happened at the same camp.

The DRC, the UN, and Western countries accuse neighbouring Rwanda of supporting the rebels in a bid to control the region's vast mineral resources, an allegation Kigali denies.

The eastern part of the DRC has been plagued by violence from local and foreign armed groups for nearly 30 years.

After several years of dormancy, the mostly Tutsi M23 group took up arms again in late 2021 and has seized large swathes of North Kivu province.