Burundi seeing biggest wave of refugees in 25 years: UNHCR

Burundi is having to deal with the largest movement of refugees in 25 years fleeing the escalating conflict in the DR Congo, the United Nations refugee agency said.

Rwandan-backed M23 fighters have made big gains in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, seizing the cities of Goma and Bukavu, prompting warnings to the UN's security council and stoking fears of a regional conflagration.

South Kivu's provincial capital Bukavu, home to some one million and bordering Rwanda, is roughly 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Burundi.

"This is the largest number of refugees that Burundi has seen since the beginning of the 2000s," UNHCR's representative in Burundi Brigitte Mukanga-Eno said Wednesday.

"Over the past few days and weeks, we have received thousands of people here in Burundi," she told a press conference in Bujumbura, estimating roughly "30,000 people" had crossed.

Mukanga-Eno said "people are still pouring in by the thousands every day."

On Monday the government said that around 10,000 people had crossed Burundi's western border, fleeing the violence in the DRC.

Prior to the recent escalation in conflict, the UNHCR said that Burundi was already hosting roughly 90,000 people -- mainly Congolese -- who had fled previous bouts of violence in the mineral-rich but conflict-stricken eastern DRC.

It comes as Bintou Keita, head of the UN's DRC peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO), expressed concern to the UN Security Council over M23's advance, which she said Wednesday is approaching the "the junction of the three borders between the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi."

Huang Xia, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for the Great Lakes region, told the Security Council on Wednesday that M23 and its allies were continuing their advance towards "other strategic areas" in North and South Kivu, and said "the risk of a regional conflagration is more real than ever".

Since October 2023, Burundi has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to help the Congolese army against the M23 and other armed groups.

However, late Wednesday military and official sources said some Burundian troops were staging a "tactical withdrawal", although the army's spokesman denied any retreat.

The fighting in recent weeks has raised fears of a repeat of the Second Congo War, from 1998 to 2003, which drew in multiple African countries and resulted in millions of deaths from violence, disease and starvation.