Aug. 20 (UPI) — Rebels from M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda, killed at least 140 people in July in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said.

The resurgence of killings of mostly Hutu civilians in at least 14 villages and farming areas near Virunga National Park in eastern DRC comes as the United States and Qatar have been working to broker peace in the region.

Human Rights Watch called the killings “executions.”

Between July 10 and 30, “M23 fighters summarily executed local residents and farmers, including women and children, in their villages, fields, and near the Rutshuru River,” Human Rights Watch said.

“Credible reports indicate the number of people killed in Rutshuru territory since July may exceed 300, among the worst atrocities by the M23 since its resurgence in late 2021,” it added.

The rebels have denied any role in these killings, calling the charges a “blatant misrepresentation of the facts,” BBC reported.

“The M23 armed group, which has Rwandan government backing, attacked over a dozen villages and farming areas in July and committed dozens of summary executions of primarily Hutu civilians,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, senior Great Lakes researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Unless those responsible for these war crimes, including at the highest levels, are appropriately investigated and punished, these atrocities will only intensify.”

Witnesses said that M23 fighters told them to immediately bury the bodies in the fields or leave them unburied, preventing families from having funerals. M23 fighters also threw bodies, including of women and children, into the Rutshuru River, Human Rights Watch said.

The mass killings appear to be part of a military campaign against opposing armed groups, especially the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, a largely Rwandan Hutu armed group created by participants in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

In the killings reported to Human Rights Watch, most victims were ethnic Hutu and some were ethnic Nande.

Rwanda has not responded to the HRW claim, but it has denied the U.N. accusations, calling them “gratuitous” and “sensational allegations.” It claims that an armed group opposed to M23 committed the killings.

Rwanda denies allegations that it provides military support to M23, which is largely made up of the Tutsi ethnic group that was targeted by Hutu militias in the genocide.

Human Rights Watch reported first-person accounts of witnesses. In one, a woman saw her husband killed by M23 fighters with a machete. The same day, “We were forced to walk toward the place where our lives were going to end,” she said. The group included about 70 women and girls. After walking all day, they were forced to sit on a riverbank to be shot at. She was only able to escape because she fell into the river without being shot.

Fighting between DRC government troops and M23 escalated in January, when the rebels captured large parts of the mineral-rich east, including the regional capital Goma.

Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians forced from their homes in the ongoing conflict, the United Nations says.

On June 27, DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington, D.C., after 30 years of conflict between the two nations.

Then on July 19, DRC and M23 rebels backed by Rwanda signed a declaration of peace after nearly four years of fighting. The rebels were not involved in the agreement in Washington but the declaration must follow the Washington Accord brokered by the United States.

As negotiations were set to resume last week, M23 walked away from the peace talks. It said Kinshasa had failed to meet commitments outlined in the deal.

Around 7 million people have been displaced in Congo, which has a population of 106 million. Rwanda also borders Uganda to the south.

The Congolese army has also accused the M23 of violating the cease-fire.