Five people were killed in a new attack blamed on Ugandan rebels near Beni in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials said Tuesday.

More than 300 people have been killed in seven months of massacres in the troubled North Kivu province by rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

The latest attack happened late Monday at Mavivi, close to Beni, a major trading hub around which much of the bloodshed has been centred.

"We found the bodies of five people killed with machetes and axes, and seven injured," regional official Amisi Kalonda told AFP.

He said the victims had been coming back from the fields at nightfall when they were set upon by attackers, "presumed" to be from the ADF.

Major Victor Masandi, spokesman for the Congolese military operation against the rebels, said one group of guerrillas attacked an army position while another set upon the civilians.

Insurgency

The new killings came as students and locals gathered in Beni Tuesday to demand more action against the attacks, with police ordered to break up the protest, the town's interim mayor Angele Nyirabitaro told AFP.

The security situation in the area has dramatically deteriorated in the past week with seven more people killed in another massacre similar to the Mavivi attack on Friday, while two UN peacekeepers from its MONUSCO mission died in an ambush on May 5.

The UN forces launched a joint operation with the Congolese army against the ADF in December, but the killings — mostly by machete — have continued.

The mostly Muslim Ugandan rebels set up bases in the east of DR Congo in the mid-1990s during an unsuccessful insurgency against President Yoweri Museveni, before being finally forced to retreat over the border.