Congo’s UN peacekeeping mission struggled on Sunday to impose a temporary ceasefire as fighting between government forces and Tutsi rebels neared an eastern city, a  UN spokeman said.

Government forces attacked rebel positions with heavy guns and mortars in two locations on Sunday, rebels said in a statement, although there was no independent confirmation.

The latest clashes erupted early on Saturday in the town of Sake, 25 km (16 miles) from Goma, strategic capital of troubled North Kivu province, as rebels in hillside positions traded heavy gun and mortar fire with government soldiers below.

UN troops, based in Sake to monitor a tense calm in the town since a failed government offensive against the insurgents last December, were caught in the crossfire.

“We will not let the (rebels) take Sake,” MONUC’s military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich told Reuters on Sunday.

“There is still no solution. There isn’t yet a ceasefire. But at least they aren’t shooting at each other right now.”

Sake is located on one of two main roads leading out of Goma and just a few kilometres from camps containing tens of thousands of North Kivu’s internal refugees.

Congo’s peacekeeping mission, known as MONUC, has repeatedly vowed to keep the town from falling into the hands of the rebels, led by renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda.

Dietrich said MONUC spent Saturday trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a temporary halt to the fighting in Sake, as thousands of civilians fled the violence.

HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS
UN helicopter gunships fired on rebel positions on Friday near Masisi, to the northwest, to stop their advance on the town. But Dietrich said conditions in Sake meant peacekeepers could not intervene using force to halt the rebels there.

“The two sides are too close to one another. We weren’t able to use our military means,” he said.

MONUC has come under increasing pressure from local officials and the government for not doing enough to pressure Nkunda’s rebels to disband and reintegrate into the army.

President Joseph Kabila’s government signed a peace deal with Nkunda and more than a dozen other armed groups in January in hopes of ending a decade of violence that has carried on well after the official end of a 1998-2003 regional war.

However, the process has been plagued by boycotts and daily ceasefire violations. Heavy fighting resumed on Aug. 28.

On Friday, Defence Minister Chikez Diemu reaffirmed Kinshasa’s commitment to the January peace process.

But Nkunda’s movement wants direct talks with the government and foreign mediation before it will return to the process.

Humanitarian agencies believe thousands of civilians have fled the fighting in recent weeks, though they currently have little access to much of North Kivu due to the violence.

Before the most recent wave of clashes, more than 850,000 people had already been forced from their homes by fighting in North Kivu since late 2006.

It is one of the world’s worst conflict-driven humanitarian disasters, adding to the estimated 5.4 million death toll from fighting, hunger and disease since Congo’s war began in 1998.