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,

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.