MORE than 50 people were killed in and around Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo over the weekend, authorities say.

The Interior Ministry said 52 people were killed, one of them in a hospital, by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, which controls the city of nearly a million people.

M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka blamed government troops for the killings, while residents who spoke to journalists said they had seen corpses on the streets but were unaware who the dead were.