Congo massacre toll reaches 90

KINSHASA, Congo -- Women and children hacked to death with machetes are among the victims of renewed fighting in northeastern Congo.

The 15 victims, found by a United Nations team on Sunday, bring the death toll from the fighting to at least 90.

The U.N. observers found a pit in Bunia, less than 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Ugandan border, where 38 hacked up bodies had been dumped on Friday. On Thursday 37 bodies were found.

"They are mostly unidentified combatants killed with machetes," U.N. spokesman Hamadoun Toure told Reuters.

He said the latest batch of bodies had been located in the grounds of the residence of the governor who had appeared to have fled.

Residents of Bunia told Reuters that the town was calmer after Ugandan troops took control on Saturday.

The fighting at Bunia pits rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML) and militias from the Lendu ethnic group against ethnic Hemas and the Ugandan army, which at one time backed the RCD-ML.

Coming after last month's peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the fighting has highlighted the difficulty of ending a many-sided conflict that has left an estimated two million dead in the mineral-rich former Zaire.

Thousands of people have been killed in fighting in recent years between the Hema and the Lendu, whose clashes over land have often been fought with bows and arrows, spears and machetes.

The RCD-ML, led by Mbusa Nyamwisi, broke away from the main RCD, Congo's biggest rebel faction backed by Rwanda.

Another breakaway group, RCD-National, accused the RCD-ML of attacking its positions about 250 km (160 miles) northwest of Bunia last week.

"Mr Nyamwisi's forces came and they died," the group's leader Roger Lumbala told the BBC from Uganda. He did not say whether his forces suffered casualties.