The intervention of the UN military mission in DRC, known as MONUC, came on the third day of fighting pitting men loyal to a former rebel leader recently suspended from his new job in the country's post-war army against regular troops.

MONUC said it opened fire on Colonel Jules Mutebusi's men because they had threatened civilians, and warned they would be arrested if they failed to return to their headquarters by dawn on Saturday.

Among Bukavu's 14 casualties were seven civilians, including two children and the head of the local court of appeal.

After enduring a devastating war that involved more than a dozen African states and a plethora of domestic rebel groups, the DRC is meant to be well on the road to peace, with former armed opposition groups brought into government and their men integrated into a national army.

The latest fighting in Bukavu, which is by no means the first since the five-year war was declared officially over more than a year ago shows that in eastern DRC at least, reconciliation is some way off.

"Colonel Mutebusi's men have launched an illegal action against the legitimate authorities of the transition," MONUC's spokesman in the town, Sebastian Lapierre, told AFP.

"We regard them as dissidents who are acting against the transition," he added.

Back in February, regular army troops, who are responsible for security across the vast country, clashed with officers from the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), a former rebel group backed by Rwanda which controlled Bukavu during the war and which is now meant to be part of the national army.

Mutebusi was an RCD commander. He is also from the Banyamulenge community, which is made up of Congolese Tutsis who have distant roots in neighbouring Rwanda -- many still speak that country's language -- and whose adopted nationality is often questioned by authorities in Kinshasa.

"We should condemn these Rwandan speakers who don't want to join the transition because they are undermining the peace process," urged a diplomat posted in the region.

He added that the fighting in Bukavu also reflected "a more general problem, which is the integration of the Banyamulenge... who have had to face hostile propaganda" put out by associates of President Joseph Kabila.

Five years of war and the bitterly resented Rwandan military occupation in Bukavu have left scars in the town and fuelled deep-rooted ethnic tensions and hostility against the Rwandan-speaking population.

Mutebusi himself told AFP on Thursday that the latest fighting was the result of this hostility and claimed that several Banyamulenge civilians had been killed in recent days.

"One of the conditions of the transition's success is a durable solution to the nationality question in the east," the diplomat told AFP.

"The transition parliament (in Kinshasa) won't be able to legislate on this amid the Bukavu clashes and anti-Banyamulenge propaganda," he added.

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