Armed men killed a UN observer outside the eastern Congolese town of Bukavu, where UN peacekeepers on Saturday contained renegade soldiers after several days of heavy clashes with the army.
"Our military observers were attacked by a group of armed men in which one was killed on the spot," said Sebastien Lapierre, a spokesman for the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as MONUC.
Rival army factions battled in the streets of Bukavu with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers for nearly three days this week, killing at least seven civilians and five soldiers, according to UN and army officials.
Colonel Jules Mutebutsi, a former rebel commander at the center of the violence, had rejected a UN ultimatum to return to barracks by Saturday morning.
But UN troops, mainly from South Africa, established a frontline down Bukavu's main street and began shepherding groups of rebel fighters towards their base and UN controlled sites.
"Almost all of Colonel Mutebutsi's forces are now grouped at identified cantonment sites where they are being guarded by UN troops," Lapierre said.
He said the renegade soldiers were still armed but being prevented from moving around with their weapons.
Residents edged out on to the streets on Saturday, but most stores remained shut. The bodies of three dead fighters still lay on the ground, which was strewn with shattered glass from widespread looting.
A UN armored personnel carrier manned by Uruguayan soldiers was camped on the road crossing into Rwanda just outside Bukavu.
Thousands of refugees fled to nearby Rwanda after the fighting erupted late on Wednesday when Congolese soldiers tried to disarm guards loyal to Mutebutsi, who is officially now part of a single, national army. Several groups of former rebels have been reluctant to be incorporated fully into a new national army being formed under a peace plan meant to end Congo's five-year conflict.
Mutebutsi is a former commander in the Goma-based Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), the biggest rebel group backed by Rwanda during the war, a sprawling conflict which sucked in armies from half a dozen neighbors.
He said on Thursday he was defending himself after troops from the capital Kinshasa came to arrest him. His whereabouts were still unknown late on Saturday.
News of the observer's death was a blow for the UN's most expensive peacekeeping mission as the world body marked Saturday's International Day for UN Peacekeepers.
A group of four military observers was attacked some 40km north of Bukavu late on Friday by unidentified men. The other three UN observers had all returned safely by Saturday, although one was slightly injured, Lapierre said.
The dead observer's nationality was not being released until family members could be notified.
The peacekeeper was the 39th to die since MONUC first deployed in 1999.
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