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.

Rebels in eastern Congo's largest city, Goma, began a ceasefire on Tuesday and people rushed to bury some 2,000 victims of last week's battles for the city as they feared the spread of disease. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who captured Goma declared a ceasefire on Monday and largely upheld it,

The Rwanda-backed rebels who seized eastern Congo's key city of Goma announced a unilateral ceasefire in the region Monday for humanitarian reasons, following calls for a safe corridor for aid and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

United Nations agencies called for an end to the violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as fighting between

The city of 2 million people is at the heart of a region home to trillions of dollars in mineral wealth and remains in rebel control.