Three people including a French UN aid worker have been killed in a drone attack in Goma, a spokesperson for the M23 rebel group has said.
The attack took place at about 4am on Wednesday in the upmarket residential neighbourhood of Himbi in the city, which has been under M23 occupation since January 2025.
Lawrence Kanyuka, the spokesperson of the Congo River Alliance group of rebels that includes M23, condemned the attack and accused the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s government of being behind it.
“A drone attack is currently being carried out against the city of Goma by the terrorist regime of Kinshasa, well beyond the frontlines,” he said on X. “This act of aggression constitutes an intolerable provocation targeting a densely populated urban area and deliberately endangering thousands of innocent civilians.”
The government has not commented on the attack and no one has claimed responsibility.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, confirmed on X that a French aid worker for Unicef, the UN children’s agency, had been killed in the strike. He urged respect for humanitarian law and for the personnel who were “on the ground and committed to saving lives”.
Unicef said it was devastated and outraged by the killing of its staff member, whom it identified as Karine Buisset. It added: “This is a painful reminder that courageous humanitarian workers must always be protected.”
Images on social media show responders putting out fire on the upper floor of a two-storey house with a damaged roof. Investigators at the Centre for Information Resilience, a nonprofit, said the extent of the damage appeared to be consistent with an airstrike.
Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the site of deadly fighting last January when M23 rebels stormed the city in an attempt to make territorial gains in the region. Up to 2,000 people were killed.
The Rwanda-backed M23 is one of more than 100 armed groups fighting Congolese forces in the mineral-rich eastern DRC. It says its objective is to safeguard the interests of the Congolese Tutsi and other minorities, including protecting them against Hutu rebel groups who escaped to the DRC after taking part in the 1994 Rwanda genocide that targeted Tutsis.
M23 occupies swathes of eastern DRC and has established parallel governments in the territories it controls.
Fighting has continued in the region despite a US-brokered peace agreement signed in December between the Congolese and Rwandan governments.
Last week, the US imposed sanctions on the Rwandan army and four of its senior officials, accusing them of “supporting, training, and fighting” alongside M23.
Wednesday’s drone attack indicates shifting dynamics in the conflict through the increasing use of drone warfare by both parties.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), a monitoring organisation, recorded 31 drone and airstrikes in the DRC last month, the highest monthly figure. Ladd Serwat, a senior Africa analyst at Acled, said Wednesday’s attack was the first in Goma since M23 gained control of the city last year.
Two weeks ago an army drone attack in Rubaya, an important M23-controlled coltan mining town, killed the group’s military spokesperson, Willy Ngoma, and several other leaders.
Last week, M23 claimed responsibility for a drone attack targeting Kisangani airport in Tshopo province in the country’s east.
