Seven villagers were killed and six wounded in a night raid at Kibaki in the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern Nord-Kivu province, the UN Mission in DRC (MONUC) announced Thursday.
  
"Seven people were killed and six sustained bullet wounds" in the attack on Tuesday night, MONUC military spokesman Jean-Paul Dietrich told AFP, adding that "there are children among the victims".
  
Villagers themselves blamed the attack on Mai Mai militia in the Congolese Resistance Patriots (Pareco) movement, one of a number of such tribal militias that signed up to a peace pact for the two Kivu provinces last January 23.
  
A local community leader, Ngedo Muhabura, confirmed the toll was "at least seven dead" in Kibaki, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the provincial capital Goma, but added "it could be higher".
  
MONUC troops based in nearby Rubaya heard shooting during the night and sent a patrol to Kibaki on Wednesday morning, where "they saw the bodies of the dead and wounded," Dietrich said.
  
Muhabura said that "eight people are missing from the village. We don't know if they fled or have been killed." Some villagers did flee after the raid and a search for those missing was under way, he added.
  
"It was Pareco fighters who killed the people in Kibaki. It was during the night. We don't know why they did it, but often they accuse the population of connivance with the CNDP," Muhabara added.
  
The National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) is a movement led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda, who battled government troops in Nord- and Sud-Kivu before his aides signed the January "act of engagement" reached after arduous peace talks in Goma.
  
Nkunda claims to be defending the minority Tutsi population in the east of the vast country from other groups and his forces have also clashed with Mai Mai militias and Rwandan rebels.
  
MONUC blamed the CNDP forces for the massacre of at least 30 other villagers between January 16 and 20 in the Masisi highlands north and west of Goma, where Kibaki lies.
  
The allegation led Nkunda temporarily to pull out of proceedings to follow up on the peace pact, but his aides rejoined the process at the start of March after they said they obtained guarantees of an independent inquiry.