Congo clashes as 'Terminator' Ntaganda deadline expires Published duration 11 May 2012

image caption At least 40,000 people have fled their homes during the last few weeks

Heavy fighting broke out in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo when a deadline expired for army mutineers to surrender.

Thousands of Congolese villagers fled over the Ugandan border overnight, officials in Uganda told the BBC.

Last weekend, the army gave the hundreds of fighters who defected last month five days to turn themselves in.

They are loyal to Bosco Ntaganda, who is known as the "Terminator" and wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes.

The International Criminal Court accuses Gen Ntaganda of recruiting child soldiers for the same rebel group as Thomas Lubanga, who in March became the first person to be convicted by the court of war crimes.

The general, who has fought for various militias over the years, denies masterminding the mutiny by former members of the CNDP rebel group.

These CNDP fighters were integrated into the Congolese army as part of a peace deal three years ago.

'Regrouping'

Congolese people who are arriving in Uganda in their thousands say they fled because of heavy gunfire near their villages, say Ugandan officials in Bunagana, which straddles the border.

The heavy fighting, estimated to be about 5km (three miles) from the border, began at Thursday night and continued into Friday morning.

A resident in the Congolese side told the BBC it was a ghost town, but Congolese army troops and UN peacekeepers were now in Bunagana.

However they arrived too late to stop the renegade soldiers taking several smaller towns on the edge of the nearby Virunga National Park.

The number of Congolese refugees in Rwanda has more than doubled in the last week to 7,000 - and tens of thousands of other civilians are pouring into displaced people's camps near the regional capital, Goma.

On Thursday, regional authorities said some people had begun to return to their villages during the ceasefire, but the BBC's Jonathan Kacelewa in the region says residents are still leaving their homes.

In the last five days about 100 of the fighters have returned to the army and large stockpiles of weapons have been recovered, according to a military spokesman.

DR Congo's Media Minister Lambert Mende told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that the army's efforts over last few weeks had "weakened bad elements who are threatening the peace" in the area.

There are an estimated 900 renegade soldiers still at large, according to sources close to the mutineers.

Following last month's defection, fighting raged in the Masisi area of North Kivu province.

There has been criticism from civil society groups in the province that the military's five-day ceasefire and ultimatum has given the defectors time to regroup.

'Example to other warlords'

They are believed to be split into three groups with some 400 fighters with Gen Ntaganda, between 80 and 250 with Col Sultani Makenga near the Rwandan border and an estimated 500 fighters with Col Innocent Kayina close to Uganda.

To the south in South Kivu province, 18 officers, who were captured not long after they mutinied, are due to go on trial on Friday charged with the capital offences of insurrection, mislaying weapons and ammunition and disobeying orders.

Their lawyer says they defected because of a general hostility against troops integrated from the CNDP movement since 2009.

Before the peace deal in 2009, the CNDP militia threatened to invade Goma, leading some 250,000 people to flee.

People in and around the town of Goma blame these troops for persistent unrest - including looting and rape - since the formal end of DR Congo's war in 2003.

The Congolese authorities have blamed the recent violence squarely on Gen Ntaganda and have called for his arrest, but say they want to try him themselves, rather than sending him to The Hague.

Mr Mende said the government's initial decision not to hand Gen Ntaganda over to the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for him in 2008, had been a "policy of appeasement".

"It was this decision of the international penal court in The Hague... to condemn Thomas Lubanga that pushed Bosco Ntaganda to be threatened and start again because he was collaborating with us," the media minister told the BBC.