RUGARI - Democratic Republic of Congo's army on Sunday gave pro-government militia fighters 48 hours to disarm or face military action as thousands more people fled renewed fighting in the eastern province of North Kivu.
Explosions and gunfire rang out before dawn in the hills around Rugari, a town of tin-roofed houses near the Rwandan and Ugandan borders, sending thousands of civilians fleeing towards the provincial capital Goma, some 35 km (22 miles) to the south.
The latest clashes, which erupted early on Saturday, came as a Mai Mai militia group, which says it is fighting alongside the Congolese army, tried to wrest a key supply route from rebels loyal to renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda.
Nkunda's forces then apparently attacked both the Mai Mai fighters and the Congolese army in retaliation.
Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, the army's operations commander in North Kivu, said the Mai Mai fighters led by former senior army officer Kasereka Kabamba were hindering the government's campaign against Nkunda and ordered them to disarm.
"I have already given Kasereka 48 hours to lay down his weapons and turn over the men under his command to reintegration centres," he told Reuters.
"If he fails to do so, I will have to disarm them myself."
Congo's army has been battling Nkunda since August, when his men abandoned a January peace deal and pulled out of government brigades. Nkunda led around 4,000 soldiers into the bush in 2004, saying he would protect Congo's Tutsi minority.
He accuses the government of supporting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan rebel group including ex-Hutu militia and Rwandan soldiers responsible for that country's 1994 genocide. Congo denies this.
