As many as 48 hacked up bodies, including 13 women and four children were found Friday in a northern town of Bunia, according to United Nations officials.

The clashes that began Tuesday involved tribal militias, a rebel group and the Ugandan army, said the report.

"The situation in Bunia is still pretty tense and our observers are unarmed, so it's difficult for them to go out and check," the UN officials said.

The presidents of the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement last July in Pretoria, capital of South Africa, aimed at ending the four-year war in the DRC.

The conflict has dragged in seven other African countries and left some 2.5 million people dead, most of whom were civilians.

According to the accord, former Rwandan troops hiding out in eastern DRC will be disarmed and regrouped, while Rwanda will withdraw its 20,000 soldiers from the DRC.

Therefore, under the deal, the DRC's sovereignty and integrity were guaranteed while Rwanda ensured its security.

In April, the DRC government held a fifty-day-long peace talks with rebel groups and opposition parties in South Africa's resort place of Sun City.

But the Kinshasa government only managed to sign a power-sharing pact with smaller rebel groups, the Ugandan-backed rebel Congolese Liberation Movement and some opposition political parties, and failed to make a peace deal with the Congolese Rally for Democracy and their Rwandan supporters.

(People's Daily August 12, 2002)