GOMA, Congo (AP) -- Congolese soldiers in retreat from advancing rebels commandeered vehicles and fired wildly as they moved through the eastern provincial capital Goma on Wednesday and joined thousands of refugees struggling to stay ahead of the violence.

Gunfire crackled in the city, apparently from the retreating troops who residents said are out of control.
Refugees said the Tutsi rebels had overrun Kibati, a village seven miles (12 kilometers) to the north that was housing thousands of people. They now are among the people streaming through the city.
Goma's governor Julien Mpaluku said panic was spreading. He said he could not confirm that the army had deserted Goma, but stressed that UN peacekeepers were still in charge and that rebels had not yet entered the city.
UN spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai confirmed the rebels were not in the city and said peacekeepers were at the airport and at in other strategic points.
The deserting soldiers, who entered the city along with thousands of fleeing civilians, were grabbing private cars as well as taxis and motorbikes as they tried to leave the city by another route.
Minority Tutsi rebels under renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda have been moving toward Goma for several days. Sustained gunfire was reported in the city's residential neighborhoods on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Congolese army said troops from Rwanda have crossed the nearby border and attacked its soldiers, raising tensions that could widen the conflict to include neighboring countries.
Nkunda has threatened to take Goma despite calls from the UN Security Council for him to respect a cease-fire brokered by the UN in January.
Rwanda's Tutsi-led government immediately denied its troops had attacked the Congolese army in support of the rebels. But Congo turned to neighbor Angola for help “defending territorial integrity,” raising fears the conflict could spread.
One of the back-to-back wars that afflicted Congo from 1997 to 2003 embroiled eight African nations and became a rush at the country's vast mineral riches.
Angolan state radio indicated Congo was seeking primarily political and diplomatic support, but International Cooperation Minister Raymond Tshibanda asked the Angolan president Tuesday night for “a promise of engagement, help in saving lives, defending territorial integrity and establishing the state's authority throughout the country.”
Congo has long alleged that Rwanda is reinforcing Nkunda's fighters, a claim UN officials say is unfounded. Peacekeepers say some Congolese army officers do work with the militiamen, but that the collaboration is not institutionalized.
The UN's biggest peacekeeping mission -- a 17,000-strong force -- is now stretched to the limit with the upsurge of fighting and needs more troops quickly from wherever it can get them, the UN's top envoy to Congo, Alan Doss said. Watch how UN struggles to halt rebels' advance »
Nkunda says the Congolese government has not protected his minority Tutsi tribe from a Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping carry out the 1994 Rwanda genocide in which half a million Tutsis were slaughtered.
The U.S. condemned the renewed violence and called on Nkunda to resume talks with the government to avoid further fighting.
“The United States is deeply concerned by the worsening humanitarian situation in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
“The violence that has driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes and placed their lives at risk is deplorable,” he said in a statement, also reaffirming U.S. support for the UN mission.
The peacekeeping force's failure to halt the rebellion has enraged Congolese who attacked UN compounds in Goma with rocks this week. People regularly stone peacekeepers' vehicles.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday he was speaking to the presidents of Congo and Rwanda to resolve the crisis and that Europe and the United States plan to send diplomats to both countries to try to negotiate a peaceful solution. He spoke in Manila, Philippines.
A UN helicopter gunship flew high in the sky toward the battlefield and Uruguayan peacekeepers deployed on a hilltop ridge.
Bomb blasts, rocket fire and screaming mortars could be heard from three miles (5 kilometers) outside the city.
The bombardment frightened tens of thousands of refugees and stirred dangerously growing anti-Tutsi sentiment in a region where decades of conflict with the majority Hutu reached a cataclysm in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
“It's the 'long noses' from Rwanda who are bombing us, the Rwanda Tutsi,” refugee farmer Gaspar Sebigore shouted at a village overrun by people fleeing the fighting.
The tall, sharp-featured Tutsi used to be the aristocracy in the region and held sway over the Hutu, a generally shorter, stockier tribe with flat facial features.
In the days after the genocide, more than a million Hutus fled victorious Tutsi forces in Rwanda and came to Congo where they regrouped in a brutal militia that helps fuel the continuing conflict in eastern Congo.
Congo's army “wants to divert the international community's attention from the fact that they are collaborating with the masterminds of the Rwandan genocide, because the conflict in Congo revolves around those genocidal forces,” Rwandan Maj. Jill Rutaremara told The Associated Press from Arusha, Tanzania, where he was attending a regional meeting on peace and security.
Nkunda's forces said Tuesday that the army had deserted numerous posts on the front line to be defended by Hutu militiamen, saying they had no choice but to fight this traditional enemy.