Congo rebel ambush kills 4 soldiers in violent east

GOMA, Congo, Aug 28 (Reuters) Four government soldiers were killed in eastern Congo by fighters loyal to a renegade general in the latest in a series of attacks threatening a fragile eight-month truce, the army said today.

Security officials from Congo and its neighbours, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, meeting in the Rwandan capital agreed after two days of closed-door talks that Congo would launch fresh operations against eastern rebels before the end of September.

''We had slowed down because of a humanitarian crisis that was about to unfold into a disaster,'' DRC's Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Dieudonne Kayembe, told reporters.

''I have only one message to the negative forces: Lay down weapons and go home or lay down arms and seek refugee status.'' The four soldiers were killed in an ambush yesterday at Matanda in Democratic Republic of Congo's lawless North Kivu province.

Congolese army commanders blamed the attack on soldiers loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda, some of whose Tutsi fighters had integrated into mixed army brigades under a January truce brokered by neighbouring Rwanda.

Congo's army and the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) -- at 17,000-strong, the largest in the world -- had sent patrols to the area around Matanda, located 40 km northwest of the provincial capital Goma.

''There were four killed on our side. I'm going to the site now with MONUC in order to verify the death toll,'' Col. Delphin Kahimbi, army operations commander for North Kivu, told Reuters.

Following the ambush, Congolese government troops during the night exchanged heavy weapons and machine-gun fire with rebel fighters at nearby Behambwe.

''HIDDEN AGENDA'' Nkunda had led a 2004 uprising in North Kivu to defend his Tutsi people in the volatile, racially mixed province, long a stronghold of militias, foreign and domestic rebels.

At least 165,000 civilians have fled fighting in North Kivu province since February, when Tutsi-commanded army brigades launched operations against the largely Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) guerrillas.

Following elections last year aimed at drawing a line under a 1998-2003 war that killed some four million people in Democratic Republic of Congo, President Joseph Kabila promised to bring peace to the east.

Without giving details, DRC's Kayembe said the military had a problem with one eastern brigade that did not want to join the army. ''We think these people have a hidden agenda,'' he said.

Nkunda accuses Kabila's government of abetting his enemies in the FDLR, which controls parts of North Kivu. The rebel group is composed in part of former Interahamwe militia who fled to Congo after taking part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Army commanders and UN officials fear recent unrest and desertions in the mixed army brigades in North Kivu threaten to plunge the troubled east back into war.

''We urge all parties to refrain from use of force and to go back to doing their job which is to protect the population,'' MONUC's spokeswoman in Goma, Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, said.

In November, MONUC helicopters and armoured vehicles killed hundreds of Nkunda's fighters, paving the way for the January peace deal.

REUTERS MS BST2230