By Joe Bavier KINSHASA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Congolese Tutsi rebels loyal to a renegade general attacked an army brigade headquarters in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, forcing thousands of civilians to flee, U.N. officials said. The attack was the latest outbreak of fighting to hit conflict-torn North Kivu province, where insurgents led by rebel General Laurent Nkunda have been resisting a government order to disband and integrate into the national army. United Nations peacekeepers said Nkunda's fighters assaulted the army base in Rutshuru, around 50 km (30 miles) north of the provincial capital Goma, after earlier skirmishes late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday in several locations in the area. "It was a full attack on their (the army's) headquarters, so it was heavy weapons as well ... It was in town," Major P.K. Tiwari, military spokesman in North Kivu for MONUC, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, told Reuters. He said the fighting later subsided. MONUC said its troops and attack helicopters were on alert to act if necessary to stop the rebels from taking the town. Local authorities said three government soldiers were injured, but there were no firm details of casualties. A spokesman for Nkunda, Major Seraphin Mirindi, said the army had attacked first. "The government attacked us on several fronts yesterday and this morning, as part of a well planned attack. We simply pursued the enemy. This was a counter-offensive," he said. Witnesses said Wednesday's fighting sent many Rutshuru residents running to the safety of a local U.N. peacekeeping base, while other civilians, fleeing clashes in neighbouring villages, packed onto roads around the town. "There are thousands on the run," Aya Shneerson, director of the U.N.'s World Food Programme in Goma, told Reuters from a roadside on the edge of Rutshuru. "We came to do an evaluation of the displaced in and around Rutshuru. And now you can't tell if these people on the road have been displaced two or three times already," she added. Nkunda, who has led a rebellion since 2004 in defence of the interests of the Tutsi ethnic group living in eastern Congo, has accused Congolese President Joseph Kabila's army of siding with Rwandan Hutu rebels, ethnic enemies of the Tutsi. "WAR CRIME" Kabila, who has vowed to pacify the east after winning elections in the vast, former Belgian colony last year, denies supporting the Rwandan Hutu rebels and his government agreed with Rwanda earlier this month to try to disarm them by force. More than 370,000 people have been displaced in North Kivu by fighting between Nkunda loyalists, government soldiers, Rwandan Hutu rebels, and local Mai Mai militia so far this year. "We've given a stern warning to the rebels, because we don't want anything to happen to the population," U.N. military spokesman Tiwari said. Rutshuru and nearby Kiwanja have a combined population of around 70,000. However, their size has ballooned in recent months, as tens of thousands of villagers have sought refuge there from repeated clashes in the troubled province. "According to humanitarian law in zones of conflict, any deliberate attack towards concentrations of civilian population, specifically displaced camps, constitutes a war crime," MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki said in Kinshasa. Wednesday's attack came a week after thousands of civilians fled an assault by Nkunda's men near refugee camps outside Goma. U.N. officials and foreign governments have been trying to broker a negotiated solution to the inter-linked insurgencies in eastern Congo, where conflict has persisted after the end of the country's 1998-2003 war. (Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Giles Elgood)
