Tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo intensified with the neighboring nations blaming each other for renewed fighting near the border, raising concerns the clashes may trigger a wider conflict.

On Tuesday, Congo defended its army’s offensive against the M23 rebels after Rwanda accused it of ignoring diplomatic solutions to the conflict and inciting ethnic hatred. Both Congo and United Nations experts say the rebels have backing from Rwanda, which it denies.

Congo’s government “categorically denounces the dishonest rhetoric of Rwanda and its military activities on Congolese soil, and reminds the Rwandan government that its interventionist and expansionist ambitions will never be tolerated,” media minister Patrick Muyaya said in an emailed statement. “There is no public incitement to hatred on the basis of ethnicity.”

Eastern Congo has suffered decades of conflict since the 1990s, when violence from the aftermath of Rwanda’s civil war and genocide spread across the border. Recent tensions between the two neighbors have raised the risks of renewed fighting in the region, which is rich in gold, tantalum and other resources.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s alleged backing of the M23 “demonstrates his strategy of permanent interference in the internal affairs of the DRC,” said Muyaya.

“The continual, unjustified attempts to make Rwanda a scapegoat for the internal political problems of the DRC will continue to be categorically rejected,” Rwanda said Monday.

The M23’s leadership is largely made up of members of Congo’s Tutsi community, who say they are defending the people of Rwandan heritage in the country and fighting ethnic Hutu rebel groups accused of the 1994 genocide. More than 800,000 people, most of them Tutsi, were killed at the time.

The Congolese army and UN peacekeepers defeated a previous M23 rebellion in 2013.

Rwanda has accused Congo of using an ethnic Hutu-dominated rebel group with links to the genocide to fight the M23. The charges were supported by recent research from New York-based Human Rights Watch.

More than 23,000 people have fled renewed fighting since Oct. 20, according to the UN, bringing the total number of displaced due to the conflict to 186,000 since March.

More than 100 rebel groups are active in eastern Congo, according to Human Rights Watch and the New York University-based Congo Research Group.

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