Thirty-two people have been killed in three days of fighting in eastern Congo between government soldiers and Rwandan Hutu rebels backed by Congolese militia allies, a top army officer said on Friday. Clashes broke out late on Wednesday when gunmen overran army positions near the town of Nyabiondo, around 110 km (70 miles) north-west of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, in Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile eastern borderlands.
Government troops, who with United Nations backing are waging an offensive against the Rwandan rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), retook the positions during an early morning counter-attack on Friday. "There were 27 dead on the enemy side ... These were FDLR and their allies, according to our information," Colonel Bobo Kakudji, the army's operations commander for North Kivu, told Reuters, adding that five government soldiers were also killed. Congo's UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, could not confirm the death toll given by the army.