The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government said on Sunday it feared “at least 200 dead” in a “massive” landslide that struck a militia-held mine in the country’s east.
Since its resurgence in 2021, the M23 armed group has seized vast tracts of the DRC’s resource-rich east, capturing the Rubaya mine in North Kivu province in April 2024 with Rwanda’s help.
The mine produces 15 to 30 percent of the world’s supply of coltan, a key component in the production of electronics such as laptops and mobile phones.
Thousands of artisanal miners work daily in precarious conditions in Rubaya’s pits, most equipped with simple shovels and rubber boots.
A “massive landslide likely left at least 200 dead”, the country’s communications ministry said in a statement to AFP on Sunday, expressing its “deep dismay” over the tragedy.
According to information obtained by AFP, part of a hillside in the mine collapsed on Wednesday afternoon. A second landslide struck on Thursday morning.
Rubaya sits on steep hillsides carved by deep ravines with dirt roads, often impassable during the rainy season, winding between unstable slopes.
The M23‑appointed governor of North Kivu, Eraston Bahati Musanga, who visited Rubaya on Friday, told AFP there were “at least 200 deaths”.
He said bodies had been recovered from the debris, without giving an exact number.
AFP was unable to independently verify a toll.
Phone networks have been down for several days there, and Congolese authorities and civil society groups fled the area when the M23 arrived.
Information is arriving “in dribs and drabs from motorbike couriers circulating the region”, making it difficult to establish an accurate toll, a humanitarian source told AFP.
Injured survivors have been taken to local health centres that have limited resources, another humanitarian source said.
Writing on X, Belgium’s embassy in Kinshasa expressed its “solidarity after the tragic landslides”.
– Organised ‘looting’ –
Resource-rich eastern DRC, which borders Rwanda as well as Burundi, has been beset by 30 years of continual violence.
According to United Nations experts, the M23 has set up an administration parallel to the Congolese state to regulate the operation of the Rubaya mine since its capture.
Experts estimate that the M23 makes around $800,000 a month from the mine thanks to a $7-per-kilogram tax on the production and sale of coltan.
UN experts also accuse Rwanda — which denies providing the M23 with military support — of using the militia to syphon off the DRC’s mineral riches.
Kinshasa on Sunday urged “the international community to fully grasp the scale of this tragedy” which it blamed on “armed occupation and an organised system of looting” by the Rwanda-backed militia.
The government noted “all mining and commercial activity” had been banned in Rubaya as of February 2025, but between 112 and 125 tonnes are extracted each month and sent “exclusively to Rwanda”.
