Two days after the fighting there are still houses smouldering in Katoto. Smoke rises from what was once a coffee store, tin roofs lie blackened in the streets and homes crumble into piles of mud.
It is not the first time rebels have attacked this small town in eastern Congo, about 20km from Bunia. The region has been turned on its head by fighting between rival Hema and Lendu tribes, manipulated by the political factions embroiled in Congo's wider war.
A French-led multinational force has begun deploying in Bunia to try to end the bloodshed, but there are fears that the rebels will simply take their battles to the lush hills and mud-hut villages beyond.
Hundreds have been killed in the past month alone, and renewed fighting in Bunia on Saturday left more corpses in the streets and thousands of terrified civilians cowering in bushes to escape the rampaging militias.
It is not clear what happened in Katoto. Rebels from the mainly Hema UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots), which controls Bunia say that about 121 people were killed when Lendu militias attacked on Saturday.
When the UPC later swept into town to show reporters the damage, residents agreed, but looked scared by the rebels waving guns in their faces and throwing belts of bullets around their own necks like scarves in winter.
Rebels showed piles of earth they said were mass graves and a bloody sheet in a pillaged house where they said Lendus killed 11 people.
When reporters tried to talk to people inside, the rebels intervened. "She's traumatised," they said. "She can't talk."
It is possible Lendu militias did attack Katoto, and certainly the town was ransacked by someone, but people were too frightened to speak openly. Uncharacteristically, they shied away from questions or gave monosyllabic answers.
Scores of militias rule the eastern jungles, competing for power with arms that experts on the region say are sent by the governments in Kinshasa, Rwanda, Uganda and by allied militias.
With a peace plan for the wider war in the Democratic Republic of Congo taking shape in Kinshasa, militias like the UPC are anxious to show themselves as viable political groups.
"Our objective is to take arms, to fight bad governance and to restore human rights," UPC Chief of Staff General Floribere Kisimbo told reporters on Monday.
Foreign aid workers describe Kisimbo's army as a band of thugs. While the Lendus are accused of mass killings and cannibalism, the Hema have also done their share of massacres, looting and raping.
Ordinary people say all they want is peace, and rejoiced when the first French troops arrived, putting their faith in the new force which they believe will do more than a UN force currently on the ground, which has a narrower mandate.
But residents are nervous about what will happen when the mission by the French-led force ends on Sept. 1.
The sound of gunfire and mortars echoed around the fertile hills a few kilometers outside Bunia again on Monday, and residents fear there is much more fighting to come.
Olive Nyango, a 22-year-old student in Katoto said she was still spending nights in the bush with her family, despite torrential rains and accompanying electric storms in recent nights.
"We are still sleeping outside," she said. "We are just too scared to come back."
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