AT LEAST 773 people were killed in Goma last week, according to Congolese authorities, as Rwanda-backed rebels captured the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in a major escalation of the region’s decade-long conflict.

There were 773 bodies and 2,880 injured people in Goma’s morgues and hospitals, government spokesman Patrick Muyaya told a briefing in the capital Kinshasa on Saturday.

“These figures remain provisional because the rebels asked the population to clean the streets of Goma,” said Mr Muyaya. “There should be mass graves and the Rwandans took care to evacuate theirs.”

Hundreds of Goma residents were returning to the city on Saturday after the rebels promised to restore basic services, including water and electricity.

M23 is the strongest of more than 100 armed groups vying for control in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich east, which contains vast deposits critical to much of the world’s technology.

They are backed by around 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, according to United Nations experts.

As the fighting with M23 continued on Saturday, the Congolese army recaptured the villages of Sanzi, Muganzo and Mukwidja in South Kivu’s Kalehe territory, which had fallen to the rebels earlier this week, according to two civil society officials.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Friday that the M23 and Rwandan forces were about 37 miles north of South Kivu’s provincial capital Bukavu, covering almost the same distance in the previous two days since they started advancing along Lake Kivu, on the border with Rwanda.

The seizure of Goma has resulted in a dire humanitarian crisis, the UN and aid groups say, as the city is a humanitarian hub for many of the six million people displaced by the conflict.

The rebel advance has left extrajudicial killings and forced conscription of civilians in its wake, UN human rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence said on Friday, adding that Congolese troops have also been accused of sexual violence.