Congolese troops and their former Rwandan rebel allies clashed for the second time in a fortnight, killing 17 people in forests near the Rwandan border, the army said Thursday. David Rugayi, an army commander in North Kivu province, told reporters 14 Hutu rebels and three soldiers were killed in fighting Monday and Tuesday. Twelve soldiers were badly wounded. Hutu rebels fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo after taking part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The DRC's new unified army launched its first concerted assault on their positions last week. "We have been engaged in serious fighting with Hutu rebels who were attacking sections of our deployment with the major aim of capturing ammunition," Rugayi said. "We managed to take over their positions and we are still engaged in mop up activities." The bodies of 14 Interahamwe Hutu rebels had been found following the battle, he told Reuters. Rugayi said an estimated six battalions of Interahamwe - anywhere from 2,700 to 4,800 men - had launched an attack on the army Monday using machine guns, rockets, mortars and anti-aircraft guns. He said his men also found land mines planted in the area. The Hutu rebels have been fighting the Tutsi-led Rwandan government from bases in eastern DRC since fleeing there following the massacre. They also fought for Kinshasa against occupying Rwandan troops in a complex five-year war in DRC that subsided in 2003. An estimated three million people were killed in the conflict. The latest fighting in the impoverished region of hills and lakes follows a spate of thinly-veiled threats by Rwanda to send its troops back into eastern Congo if Kinshasa and the United Nations fail to stop the rebels attacking Rwandan territory. Rwanda was reacting to the first reported raid on its territory for several years by the Congo-based Hutu rebels on April 8. The government in Kigali demands United Nations peacekeepers forcibly disarm the exiled guerrilla force. Rwanda, along with most other combatants, withdrew its troops in 2002, but said it would send them back if it felt threatened by Hutu rebels. Under a post-war political settlement signed in 2003 rival Congolese leaders including President Joseph Kabila agreed to create a unity government and form a national army out of their respective guerrilla forces and Kabila's own troops. The top commanders of the army units involved in the latest fighting are Kinshasa loyalists who support Kabila but the rank and file and field commanders are drawn from Congolese guerrilla forces backed by Rwanda, army officers say. Congo's wider war began in 1998 when Uganda and Rwanda invaded to back rebels fighting to topple the central government. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia then sent troops to aid the government in Kinshasa.