The anti-government group M23 announced on Saturday the death of its military spokesman, Willy Ngoma, killed in a drone strike by the Congolese army, a new episode in the escalation of violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Since the end of 2021, the M23 (for "March 23 Movement") has seized, with the support of Kigali and its army, vast areas in the eastern part of the DRC, rich in resources and ravaged for thirty years by conflicts.

Clashes have intensified there recently.

On Tuesday, M23 fighters were targeted by a drone strike by government forces near Rubaya, a strategic mining town located in the Masisi territory, an official from the armed group based there and security sources told AFP.

This mining site, stretching over several dozen kilometers, fell under the control of the M23 in April 2024. According to UN experts, the M23 derives significant revenue from the site through a tax levied on the production and trade of minerals. The Rubaya mine alone accounts for between 15 and 30% of global coltan production, a strategic mineral for the electronics industry. The DRC is estimated to hold at least 60% of the world's reserves.

- A figure from M23 -

The M23, which had neither confirmed nor denied the rumor surrounding the death of Willy Ngoma, accused "the Kinshasa regime" in a statement on Saturday of having "deliberately violated the ceasefire and imposed total war", by "making our soldiers and our civilian populations the main target of its drones outside the front lines".

"These flagrant violations cost the life of one of our senior officers in the Congolese Revolutionary Army (ARC), Colonel Willy Ngoma, who fell on February 24, 2026, and continue to take the lives of many innocent compatriots," noted Lawrence Kanyuka, the head of the movement's communications department.

Born in 1974, Willy Ngoma, who presented himself as a former teacher, joined the ranks of the M23 at the end of 2021 and became one of its best-known figures.

Appointed military spokesperson for this movement, he became known for his videos in which he portrayed himself, jovial, with Congolese or Burundian soldiers captured during the fighting.

In 2024, the United Nations Security Council sanctioned him along with five other high-ranking members of armed groups operating in the east, accused of having "planned, directed or committed", by virtue of their high positions, "acts constituting violations of human rights or international humanitarian law".

Thousands dead

As the M23's military spokesman, Willy Ngoma "shares responsibility for the crimes committed" by the movement and "is directly responsible for justifying and promoting the many deliberate attacks perpetrated by the group against civilians in the east," according to the United Nations.

Mr. Ngoma had also been sanctioned by the European Union in 2022 and the United States in 2023 for his role in the M23.

After the M23 took Goma in January 2025, Willy Ngoma was one of the first leaders of the movement to appear in this city which fell at the cost of clashes which left thousands dead.

He had also appeared during the first M23 meeting held in Goma in early February of the same year.

In May 2025, he showed the press nearly 300 civilians expelled by the M23 and presented as "Rwandan subjects in an illegal situation", an operation described by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) as a forced transfer of civilians, linked to a predominantly Hutu armed group.

In December, the M23 launched an offensive on the strategic city of Uvira, located in the eastern province of South Kivu, provoking the ire of Washington, mediator of a fragile peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda.

Angola, another mediator in the eastern conflict, proposed to Kinshasa and the M23 a ceasefire starting on February 18, but this did not end the fighting.