Fighting which erupted Sunday morning between rebels and forces backing the government in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has ended, United Nations sources said.
   
The clashes took place at Ngungu, some 60 kilometres (35 miles) west of Goma, the provincial capital of Nord-Kivu, which is on the border with Sud-Kivu province.
   
The clashes involved rebels led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda on one side and pro-government Mai-Mai militia and Hutu rebels on the other, said Lieuteant Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, spokesman for the UN mission in Congo (MONUC).
   
Earlier he had reported that government forces (FARDC) had taken part but now said no Congolese regular troops had been involved.
   
Fighting began at about 5:00 am (03H00 GMT) and "ended towards 11:00 am" after MONUC mediation which negotiated an end to the violence, Dietrich said in Kinshasa.
   
Bertrand Bisima, spokesman for Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), said he did not know of the clashes.
   
The fighting that has flared up since August between rebel and government forces, in violation of a January ceasefire, has so far been limited to Nord-Kivu.
   
Ngungu was the scene of clashes six weeks ago and is on the southwestern edge of the territory controlled by the rebels.
   
Nkunda says he is a defender of the Congolese Tutsis against the rebel Hutus of the FDLR, who include some who took part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, which took an estimated 800,000 lives, and then fled.
   
In June 2004 Nkunda's forces left their stronghold in Nord-Kivu to make an incursion into Sud-Kivu and briefly seized the provincial capital Bukavu.