Congo's government and a key rebel group are reported to have agreed to start withdrawing troops from their latest battleground in the northeast under a deal brokered by the United Nations on Friday.
The fighting has been in North Kivu province, 190 miles southwest of Bunia town, where a French-led force deployed this month to end weeks of tribal massacres.
The North Kivu fighting, a more recent but less well publicised conflict than that the bloodshed around Bunia, has caused tens of thousands of people to flee towns and villages in the mineral-rich area bordering Uganda and Rwanda.
Aid workers say such is the turmoil created in North Kivu that they have no reliable estimates of dead and wounded.
The combatants agreed a ceasefire 10 days ago but the truce has been widely ignored as government-backed militiamen have struggled to halt a determined push northwards by Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma fighters towards the trading towns of Butembo and Beni.
