"We're on the ground. We've been confronting the FARDC (the Democratic Republic of Congo's military) since this morning three kilometers (two miles) from Bunagana ... where we were yesterday," Vianney Kazarana, a spokesman for the mutineers' March 23 Movement, told AFP by telephone.

 

"The FARDC are using combat tanks. We're resisting. We're at the front, we're facing the enemy."

 

The two sides have been mired in tit-for-tat clashes in the remote jungle region for weeks.

The mutineers are former rebels who were integrated into the army under a 2009 peace deal but started to defect en masse, complaining of poor treatment.

 

On Saturday, fighting broke out around 4:00 a.m. (0200 GMT) when they attacked army positions in the Rutshuru territory near Virunga National Park on the Ugandan border, home to more than half the world's 700 or so mountain gorillas.

 

Kinshasa accuses former rebel leader General Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court for enlisting child soldiers, of leading the mutiny.

 

More than 10,000 people have fled to Rwanda and Uganda over the past few days. 

 

Led by Ntaganda, hundreds of former members of the CNDP rebelled against Kinshasa last month in protest over mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), Press TV reported. 

 

The CNDP was a rebel militia group that split from the FARDC. In 2009, a peace treaty was signed by the rebels and the Congolese government, which integrated the CNDP into the FARDC. 

 

Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.