Nearly 3,000 people were killed over the last week as rebels captured a key city in one of the deadliest battles in the Central African country in decades.

M23 is the latest in a long line of Rwandan-backed rebel movements to emerge in Congo's volatile eastern borderlands following two successive wars stemming from Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Rwanda denies supporting the well-trained and heavily armed Tutsi-led group.

Rwanda-backed rebels claimed on Monday they captured eastern Congo’s strategic city of Goma, the hub of a region containing trillions of dollars in mineral wealth that remains largely untapped.