Mata-Nyamunyobo was addressing a press conference as regular DRC troops advanced on the eastern town of Bukavu, close to the Rwandan border, which was overrun last week by dissident soldiers drawn from former rebel ranks.

He expressed surprise at the numbers of soldiers, weapons and vehicles the dissident troops, led by Colonel Jules Mutebusi and General Laurent Nkunda, reportedly had in the east.

Nkunda said Sunday he was pulling his 4,000 troops out of the town centre, and the UN mission in DRC, MONUC confirmed that Nkunda and about 700 men had left Bukavu on Sunday afternoon.

Some of the dissident soldiers were wearing Rwandan uniforms, said the DRC army chief, claiming there was "irrefutable proof of aggression against our country," since regular troops would have crushed the dissidents had they not been supported by neighbouring Rwanda.

Last week's fighting, which claimed at least 88 lives in the capital of the eastern Sud-Kivu province, according to UN figures, took place despite the presence of hundreds of UN peacekeepers, who have a mandate to open fire if civilians' or their own lives are threatened.

MONUC's role is to help usher in a political transition which has already brought former rebels into the Kinshasa government under a peace pact signed to end a 1998-2003 DRC war which drew in the armies of more than half a dozen African countries.

Rwanda, which backed DRC rebel movements in the war, last year said that all its soldiers had been withdrawn from the territory of its vast central African neighbour, the size of western Europe minus Scandinavia.

Mutebusi and Nkunda said they seized Bukavu to defend the town's Banyamulenge community, Congolese Tutsis with close ties to Rwanda, many of whom are regarded with hostility by other Bukavu residents.

Maya-Nyamunyobo urged the Banyamulenge to "drop their solidarity with those who have turned their weapons" on DRC.

He also said that one of DRC's four vice-presidents, Azarias Ruberwa, also Banyamulenge and a former leader of the rebel movement backed by Kigali during the war, had evoked the presence on DRC soil of Interahamwe, the Rwandan Hutu militias blamed for the 1994 genocide, as a "pretext" to allow Rwanda to attack.

DRC regular troops had held back so far from intervening to "avoid a bloodbath", the admiral said.

He also thanked students and other people who had shown their "anger" on Wednesday and Thursday at inaction by MONUC, by holding protest demonstrations in Kinshasa and in several other towns.

In Kinshasa, 12 people were killed during the protests, where looters also also went on the rampage.

WAR.WIRE