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UN troops opened fire Wednesday on the pro-government Mai-Mai militia who attacked them in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a spokesman for the UN mission in DR Congo told AFP.
   
Mai-Mai members fired on two UN armoured vehicles patrolling Kibututu, north of the main eastern city of Goma, said Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, the spokesman for the UN mission known as MONUC.
   
"The (UN troops) responded with light arms fire," he said, stressing that this was to avoid civilian injuries as the exchange took place in a market area in Kibututu, about 80 kilometres from Goma.
   
Dietrich said the UN troops were "trying to verify information that the Mai-Mai militia was advancing" towards the town of Kiwanja, which is under the control of rebels headed by renegade cashiered general Laurent Nkunda.
   
Nkunda's men were withdrawing from around two battlefronts some 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Goma, MONUC confirmed.
   
But the rebels stayed put around 15 kilometres from the city of some 500,000.
   
Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), which said it was withdrawing from the zones for UN peacekeepers to step in to the breach, accused the army of preparing to move into the evacuated zones.
   
It warned to reverse the withdrawal if government forces moved into the vacated areas.