Rwandan-backed M23 rebels and the Rwandan army have indiscriminately shelled densely populated areas of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), including refugee camps, since January, NGO Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
It said the DRC army and its allies, which are fighting M23 and its Rwandan military backers, had increased the danger to civilians by opening fire inside refugee camps and assaulting civilians.
Both sides had "killed and raped camp residents, interfered with aid delivery and committed other abuses", the rights group said, noting that many of the victims were women and children.
It stressed that the laws of war "prohibit deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects", adding: "A state that knowingly provides weapons to abusive armed groups may be complicit in war crimes."
Since launching an offensive in late 2021, M23, a largely Tutsi militia, has seized large swathes of territory in the eastern DRC -- a mineral-rich region housing a string of rival rebel groups that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for the past three decades.
The resurgence of M23 has triggered a humanitarian disaster, particularly in the eastern province of North Kivu.
Over half a million people have fled to camps surrounding the regional capital, Goma, "pushing the total number of displaced people in North Kivu to about 2.4 million", HRW said.
"The Rwandan army and the M23 armed group have throughout 2024 indiscriminately shelled displacement camps and other densely populated areas near Goma," the HRW office in Kenya said.
The rights group said it had "documented five apparently unlawful attacks by Rwandan forces and the M23 since January 2024, in which artillery or rocket fire struck displacement camps or populated areas near Goma".
- Foreign interference -
HRW said M23 fighters had raped women crossing its front line with the DRC army in search of food.
Congolese soldiers and a coalition of militia known as "Wazalendo" ("patriots" in Swahili) had also committed rape and had "opened fire inside displacement camps, killing and wounding civilians".
In August, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said more than one in 10 young women in camps in and around Goma had reported being raped between November 2023 and April 2024, HRW said.
Fighting near Goma and the camps had affected delivery of humanitarian aid and created food shortages in the city, it continued.
M23 is backed by Kigali which believes the presence in eastern DRC of a Rwandan Hutu extremist group, the FDLR, constitutes a threat to Rwanda's borders, according to reports released in August by the Ebuteli institute in the DRC and New York-based Congo Research Group.
On Wednesday, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi asked the United Nations General Assembly to impose targeted sanctions on Rwanda.
The DRC government, France and the United States have all accused Rwanda of backing M23.
The UN Security Council has so far only condemned "foreign" entities for providing M23 with military support.