By james art 
Goma, Congo (AP), the owners and business owners in the second largest city of the East Congo sat Saturday morning after a high-speed Sagittarius night, marking the continued progress of Rwanda-supported rebels.
The families remained indoors and the shops remained closed as the M23 fighters entered the outskirts of Bukavu – a city of about 1.3 million people, which is located 63 miles (101 kilometers) south of Goma, the largest city in The region taken by the rebels last month.
The group, backed by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, is the most famous of more than 100 armed groups fighting for control of the rich in mineral sources of the Congo. Its expansion to the south covers more territory than rebels have previously seized and are an unprecedented challenge to the power of the central government.
The rebellion killed at least 2000 people in and around Goma and left hundreds of thousands displaced, UN and Congoa authorities said.
The rebels on Friday also claimed that they had captured a second airport in the region, in the town of Kavuma outside Bukavu. The UN warned that the recent escalation of the battles with the government had left 350,000 internally displaced people without shelter.
The Associated Press could not immediately confirm who controlled the strategically important airport that Congoan forces used to supply troops and humanitarian groups used to import help.
Government officials and local civil society leaders did not comment immediately, although the Congo Ministry of Communications said the rebels had violated the fire termination agreements and attacked the Congoan troops working to avoid urban wars and Bukav’s violence.
M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanjuka told X that the rebels were taking over the Kavumo airport and its surroundings to “eliminate the threat of the source.”
“The airport is a danger to the civilian population,” he said.
A local civil society leader in Kavumu said they were seeing soldiers “giving up their positions and heading to Bukavo”-a relevance of events that happened last month in the upcoming M23 Goma. The military military, despite their size and financing, has long been impeded by the disadvantages of training and coordination and repeated corruption reports.
International leaders are expected to discuss the conflict at the African Union Summit in Ethiopia this weekend, as Congo President Felix Tshiziekedi continues to ask the international community to intervene to control the rebels from progress. However, a little progress has been made after the government has rejected the cessation of fire, which M23 declared the last Wee unilaterally incorrect.
Chaos and panic among residents
Meanwhile, in the province of South Kivus, residents fled Bukavv to neighboring cities and stock up with home supplies in anticipation of a more increasing bloodshed on the streets. The UN Refugee Agency said the firing and the robbery had already destroyed 70,000 emergency shelters, leaving the displaced with few places to go.
“I noticed that the soldiers were dropping out and fleeing, so I told myself that I could no longer stay in this place,” said Alexi, among the residents fleeing Kavum. “The fear we have is the people who move without cooking or food. We only run for this situation. “
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The Associated Press Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.