Rwandan troops march Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers captured in the battle for Goma across the border Monday to Gisenyi in northwestern Rwanda. 

Ethnic-Tutsi rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo were reported to have taken the key eastern city of Goma in fierce fighting with government forces that sent streams of refugees fleeing area communities.

The government in Kinshasa, 1,500 miles away, denied that the so-called M23 rebels had captured the city of more than 1 million in North Kivu province Sunday but footage circulating online showed fighters of the Rwanda-backed group in control of the streets.

In a statement, the group called for calm but U.N. Special Representative to the DRC Bintou Keita told a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting that with roads blocked and the airport closed she and her mission were unable to escape the fighting.

The development came amid heightened tensions with neighboring Rwanda, on its eastern flank, amid one of the world's worst ongoing humanitarian crises.

DRC government spokesman Patrick Muyaya, in a post on X, urged people to stay home, not get involved in looting or vandalism, and not repeat or share Rwandan disinformation, saying that government forces were battling to prevent "carnage" and civilian casualties.

"In view of the security situation in the city of Goma marked by the presence of the Rwandan army, we wish to reassure the population that following the instructions of the president of the republic, the government continues to work to avoid carnage and loss of human life," Muyaya said.

He also urged the Congolese diaspora around the world "to mobilize in support of our compatriots in North Kivu, our Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Supreme Commander [President Felix Tshisekedi].

"We are all guardians of our territory. Not a single centimeter will be given up!"

Earlier, DRC Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner accused Kigali of declaring war by deploying its troops across the border to support the M23 rebels in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution establishing the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO) that saw the deployment of 18,000 peacekeepers to the DRC.

Kigali has in turn accused the DRC of backing groups in Rwanda trying to bring an end to three decades of one-party rule by President Paul Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the gains being made by the M23 were "heightening the threat of a regional war" and demanded the group immediately halt its offensive, withdraw from all occupied areas and abide by a July 31 cease-fire agreement.

According to MONUSCO, more than 178,000 people have been displaced in the past two weeks by advancing M23 forces, mostly in the eastern DRC province of South Kivu, which shares a border with North Kivu and Burundi and Rwanda to the east.

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