GOMA, Congo (AP) — Congo’s government and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels on Friday accused each other of violating terms of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending decadeslong fighting and bringing a permanent peace in the conflict-battered region.
Recent drone strikes and clashes have cast doubt over the peace deal and a separate minerals deal that Congo signed with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to enable the U.S. access Congo’s rich minerals.
Trump helped negotiate a peace deal between Congo and neighboring Rwanda, seen as an indirect but key player in the conflict, while Qatar and other partners have championed similar efforts involving direct negotiations between the government and the M23.
But neither track has halted the fighting.
On Tuesday, a drone strike that the M23 blames on Congolese forces killed a French United Nations staffer in the key city of Goma, less than a month after a similar strike killed the rebel group's spokesperson and injured several others.
Residents continue to report clashes between the M23 and Congo's forces sometimes joined by the local Wazalendo militia group, with thousands displaced in recent weeks.
M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka told The Associated Press that the group is still committed to peace efforts if Congo's army “refrains from attacking our positions and assassinating our leaders, soldiers, and innocent civilians.”
Congolese government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said the government is investigating this week's strike that killed a French aid worker, but did not elaborate on other drone strikes.
He blamed the M23 for violating the ceasefire, but said that the government side would like to “reaffirm our commitment to respecting the ceasefire" and other agreements.
The AP could not independently verify events in affected localities in the region. The attacks have, however, complicated peace efforts in the region where mass graves were recently found.
The conflict has precipitated one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with at least 7 million people displaced in eastern Congo.
Despite the peace talks, at least 60 drone strikes have been attributed to the Congolese military in 2026 and less than 5% of drone strikes in the region have been attributed to the rebels in the last year, according to a report by the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), which gathers data on conflict around the world.
“You still have people losing their lives to this crisis, and you still have displacement,” said Christian Rumu, a senior campaigner with Amnesty International, adding that Congolese “do not feel any positive change” from the peace deals.
“Heavy artillery has been used on densely populated areas throughout the conflict since 2021, and we see that in the latest attack in Goma,” Rumu said.
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AP writer Saleh Mwanamilongo contributed to this report. Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.
A U.N peacekeeper guards a house hit by a drone strike in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin legislator has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct in connection with a bitter feud with her caucus over resolutions honoring Hispanics.
Prosecutors in Milwaukee County charged state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez in February. Online court records show the Milwaukee Democrat entered the guilty plea Friday, and Judge Paul Malloy ordered her to pay a $300 fine and submit a DNA sample. She could have faced up to 90 days in jail.
Ortiz-Velez said in a statement after the sentencing that she will pay the fine and remains focused on her constituents, not caucus infighting.
“My voting choices caused a rift that has been ugly and bitter,” she said. “My constituents did not send me to Madison to litigate internal caucus disputes or be distracted by the personal feuds — they sent me there to deliver results.”
A spokesperson from Assembly Democratic Minority Leader Greta Neubauer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
According to the criminal complaint, the feud began in August as Democratic members of the state Assembly were planning resolutions honoring Hispanic heritage and Hispanic veterans in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month in September.
Ortiz-Velez grew angry because she believed an unnamed lawmaker drafting the heritage resolution had intentionally excluded her from working on it.
The complaint states that she had been invited to work on the resolution in June and chose not to participate but still wanted to help draft the language. She contacted media outlets saying she had been intentionally left out of the resolution work. She also told the resolution's author that she felt excluded from working on another resolution that same legislator was crafting honoring Hispanic veterans, saying her late husband was a Hispanic veteran.
Two more unnamed lawmakers told investigators that Ortiz-Velez told them in separate phone conversations that she was going to spread “negative personal information” about the resolutions’ author to the media and that “they are going to do what I want them to do, or I’m going to x, y and z," according to the complaint.
When one of the lawmakers asked her what that meant, she made comments about the resolutions’ author’s personal life and other legislators. The complaint characterized those remarks as “indecent and tended to disrupt the good public order" but does not elaborate or offer any more specificity.
Democratic leaders issued a statement in September saying Ortiz-Velez had made a comment about shooting three caucus members. That statement came a day after another statement announcing that Ortiz-Velez was leaving the Democratic caucus.
In interviews with the news website Wisconsin Right Now and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ortiz-Velez denied that she threatened her colleagues. But the Legislature's human resources office barred her from entering the state Capitol for a day. A spokesperson for Assembly Republican Speaker Robin Vos said at the time that she shouldn't have been banned.
Ortiz-Velez's attorney, Michael Cernin, said in a telephone interview Friday that Assembly Democrats were already upset with Ortiz-Velez going into September because she had voted for the 2025-27 state budget and for new legislative maps Democratic Gov. Tony Evers drew up in 2024. Democrats opposed the spending plan in part because they felt it doesn't adequately fund public schools and argued the state Supreme Court should have drawn the new legislative maps.
Rep. Priscilla Prado, another Milwaukee Democrat, wouldn't allow Ortiz-Velez to participate in the Hispanic resolutions, he said. Two of the lawmakers who went unnamed in the complaint made allegations to investigators that Ortiz-Velez had threatened to expose unsavory elements of Prado's personal life to the media, he said.
“It’s incredibly petty, and Sylvia didn’t want any part of this,” Cernin said. “Sylvia truly wanted to spare Prado any sort of embarrassment on this.”
No one immediately responded to messages left with Prado’s Capitol’s office seeking comment on Friday afternoon.
FILE - A man walks by the Wisconsin state Capitol, Oct. 10, 2012, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer, File)
