At least 70 people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Red Cross workers in the region.

On Tuesday, Cory Kik, the medical coordinator of the French medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders -- MSF) quoted local Red Cross workers as saying that 70 people were killed in the eastern town of Kitchanga in North Kivu province after days of fighting, Reuters reported.

"Local Red Cross workers are saying 70 people dead," Kik stated, adding, "The situation is very serious… Seeing the burnt-out houses and the casualties, it's shocking."


By Tuesday, around 10,000 people gathered outside the United Nations base in Kitchanga seeking refuge.

Congolese army spokesman Colonel Olivier Hamuli said government troops recaptured Kitchanga on Monday and are in control of the town.

"The army has retaken the town of Kitchanga, everything is under control," Hamuli noted.

On Sunday, the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo, better known by its French acronym APCLS, took the town, AFP quoted deputy UN spokesman Eduardo Buey as saying on Monday.

Buey said the fighting left more than 80 people dead and around 100 people injured.

On Tuesday, a local official told Reuters that about 200 people were dead or missing, and more than 300 homes have been destroyed.

Kitchanga is in the Masisi region of North Kivu, close to where the Congolese army and UN peacekeepers are in a showdown with the March 23 movement (M23) rebels.

Clashes between the army and APCLS broke out in the region last week.

The fighting occurred despite the UN-brokered peace deal recently signed by 11 African nations, including the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On February 24, the eleven countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa signed a UN-mediated peace agreement meant to end the interminable cycles of violence that have been plaguing the eastern Congo for many years.

Several armed groups, including the M23 rebels, are active in the eastern Congo and fighting for control of the country’s vast mineral resources, such as gold, the main tin ore cassiterite, and coltan (columbite-tantalite), which is used to make many electronic devices, including cell phones.

The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.

Since early May 2012, nearly 3 million people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. About 2.5 million have resettled in Congo, but more than 460,000 have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

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 since 1998 and left over 5.5 million people dead.