President Laurent Kabila's loyalist troops killed 18 Rwandan soldiers at a village 40 km from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, state radio reported yesterday.
Officials said the Rwandans were part of a force which helped Mr Kabila to topple Mr Mobutu Sese Seko last year but are now accused of fomenting a rebellion in Mr Kabila's army.
The clash at Kasangulu took place on Monday, the report said. Those killed were among an estimated 100 Rwandan soldiers fleeing after failing to incite Congolese soldiers to join a Tutsiled revolt.
There was no independent confirmation of the report.
The Kinshasa government yesterday denied that Tutsi rebels had seized the oil town of Boma. An oil industry source in Pointe Noire, the oil capital of neighbouring Congo, had said earlier that Boma was under the control of forces which launched a rebellion on August 2nd.
However, the Information Minister, Mr Didier Mumengi, said: "It's false. Our forces control the city," some 400 km south-west of Kinshasa in Bas Congo province between Angola and Congo. A western diplomat also said Boma was under government control.
The rebels already control the coastal cities of Banana and Moanda, where an oil source said Rwandan soldiers were patrolling the streets. He said most of the rebels were concentrated further up-river and seem to be preparing for a major offensive on Matadi.
Soldiers from Congo's ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge minority launched the revolt in the eastern town of Goma on August 2nd. They hold Goma, Bukavu and Uvira in the east and three towns in the strategic western River Congo corridor supplying Kinshasa.
President Kabila, helped to power by the Rwanda's Tutsidominated army and the Banyamulenge in May 1997, has accused Rwanda and Uganda of fomenting the revolt and sending troops to support it. Both deny the charges.
An Organisation of African Unity mediation mission held talks with officials in Kinshasa on Monday. It left for Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania yesterday. The mission followed the failure of a weekend regional summit in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, to mediate an end to the fighting.
President Kabila criticised the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda yesterday for what he called their invasion of his country to back the Congolese Tutsis.
"It's a good thing that young people across the country are willing to take up arms against the attackers," he told state radio at Kinshasa airport on his return from the southern city of Lubumbashi.
After a week of setbacks, President Kabila's army said on Monday it was holding its ground against the rebels on both fronts.
Meanwhile, Rwanda has told the UN Security Council in a letter circulated on Monday that it has played no part in the uprising.