Rival militias fought for control of the east Congo town of Bunia yesterday, a day after the first French soldiers from a multinational force arrived here to keep the peace.
Machine gun, mortars and small-arms fire sounded from the southern suburbs in the early hours of yesterday morning, and witnesses said that there was shooting in the town's main street.
Residents said Lendu gunmen appeared to have launched an assault on positions of the rival Union of Patriotic Congolese (UPC), a Rwandan-backed militia of the ethnic Hema community which seized control of Bunia on May 12.
Bullets snapped and whined around buildings in the center of the town.
At an early stage in the fighting, panic-stricken civilians fleeing the violence were seen running in the streets carrying bundles of possessions on their heads.
There was no sign at all of the hundreds of displaced civilians who normally spend their day gossiping and trading outside a UN building.
Rival forces allied to the rival Hema and Lendu tribes have been fighting for more than a month in and around the dilapidated settlement of more than 200,000 people in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The first of 1,400 international soldiers began deploying on Friday, to reinforce a UN force already on the ground which has done little to stop the bloodshed.
The UN says 500 civilians have been massacred in ethnic fighting in and around Bunia in the past month and 50,000 have been killed since 1999.
Militiamen from both sides, often drugged or drunk, have raped, looted and forced thousands of civilians from Bunia.
The UPC had been expected to hand over control of the town once the UN force completes its deployment.
UN officials say that the UPC wants to keep its fighters in the town to protect Hema leaders.It is unclear if this new condition will be acceptable to the French-led force.
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