Since its resurgence in 2021, the M23 armed group has taken control of large parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), including the Rubaya coltan mine in North Kivu province, which fell under M23 control in April 2024 with support from Rwanda.
The Rubaya mine produces between 15 and 30 percent of the world’s coltan, a vital mineral used in electronics such as laptops and mobile phones. Thousands of artisanal miners work daily under precarious conditions, relying on basic tools such as shovels and rubber boots.
The DRC communications ministry reported on Sunday that a “massive landslide likely left at least 200 dead,” expressing “deep dismay” over the disaster. According to AFP sources, part of a hillside collapsed on Wednesday afternoon, followed by a second landslide on Thursday morning.
Rubaya is located on steep hillsides carved by deep ravines, with dirt roads that are often impassable during the rainy season. The M23-appointed governor of North Kivu, Eraston Bahati Musanga, who visited the site on Friday, said at least 200 bodies had been recovered from the debris, though an exact toll has not been confirmed.
Communication remains limited, as phone networks have been down for several days, and many authorities and civil society groups fled when the M23 took over the area. Information is being relayed “in dribs and drabs from motorbike couriers circulating the region,” making accurate casualty figures difficult to obtain, a humanitarian source told AFP. Injured survivors have been taken to local health centres with limited resources.
Belgium’s embassy in Kinshasa expressed solidarity on X (formerly Twitter), mourning the tragic landslides.
Organised Looting
Eastern DRC, rich in minerals and bordering Rwanda and Burundi, has been plagued by decades of violence. United Nations experts say that since capturing Rubaya, the M23 has established a parallel administration to manage the mine.
Experts estimate that the militia earns around $800,000 per month from Rubaya through a $7-per-kilogram tax on coltan production and sales. UN reports also accuse Rwanda — which denies military support for M23 — of exploiting the militia to siphon off the DRC’s mineral wealth.
Kinshasa called on the international community to “fully grasp the scale of this tragedy,” attributing the disaster to “armed occupation and an organised system of looting” by the Rwanda-backed group. The government noted that while all mining and commercial activity had been officially banned in Rubaya as of February 2025, between 112 and 125 tonnes of coltan are still extracted each month and exported “exclusively to Rwanda.”
