Six people were killed today, including a young girl, when rival Congolese militia clashed in the volatile northeast of the vast country, a UN military spokesman said.
The latest bloodshed involving ethnic Hema and Lendu militia underscored the challenge faced by UN troops in bringing peace to the Ituri region, where some 50,000 people have been killed in tribal clashes since 1999.
Militiamen of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), allied to the Hema tribe, attacked Lendus in the village of Lengabo, close to Bunia where the UN force in the area has its headquarters.
UN troops found the bodies of a young girl, a woman and a Lendu combatant outside the village, as well as what were believed to be three dead UPC fighters.
The United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo aims to expand its presence in Ituri, where clashes between rival groups of gunmen have raged on despite an April peace deal ending Congo's wider war.
The UN Security Council agreed in July to increase the number of troops in the former Zaire to 10,800 from 8,700, partly in response to a series of massacres and clashes in the centre of Bunia earlier in the year.
Human rights groups have accused the Congolese government, Uganda and Rwanda of backing various groups in Ituri as proxies in a struggle for power and control of the region's gold and diamond deposits.