Over 30 killed in fighting between Congolese army and rebels

Beni - More than 30 people were killed in eastern Congo in fighting between the army and a rebel group of Ugandan origin, the army said on Thursday.

Twenty members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and 11 government soldiers have been killed since Monday in villages north of the town of Beni, the military said.

The army regained control of the area Wednesday and the rebels fled, spokesman Mak Hazukay Mongba said.

The army launched an offensive in January 2014 against the Islamist ADF, which was founded in 1995 in Uganda and later moved to Congo. The group massacred hundreds of people in the Beni area last year.

Dozens of armed groups have remained active in eastern Congo since the 1996-2003 Congo wars, sparked by more than one million Rwandans flooding into the region after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Many of the armed groups terrorise local people to have free rein in trafficking in the region's rich natural resources, according to human rights activists.