Ugandan soldiers have taken control of a strategic trading town in the north-east Democratic Republic of Congo. The Ugandan army said they had given chase to rebels of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), who had been in control of Bunia, and they had fled. UPC leader Thomas Lubanga said his men had left Bunia "after very heavy clashes". He said his men were now "a few kilometres outside Bunia, near the Ugandan border". Uganda, which has a base outside Bunia at the airport, used to support the UPC, but correspondents say relations have soured since the rebels demanded that the Ugandan soldiers withdraw from the region. Following the fighting, peace talks between the Congolese factions in South Africa overcame protests from the largest rebel group and went on to produce a draft accord for a unity government. But Uganda army spokesman major Shaban Bantariza said that UPC rebels simultaneously attacked two of their positions at Bunia airport and at Ndelele 5 km from the town. Bunia's population has doubled to 200,000 in recent months as people fleeing fighting elsewhere in Ituri province have flooded in. Earlier this week the United Nations announced they would send a team to the north-east to investigate reports of a massacre in Bogoro, just south of Bunia. Mr Lubanga said that hundreds of civilians had been killed by militia allied to the DR Congo Government. More than two million people are believed to have died as a result of the war which began in 1998, and at one stage dragged in half a dozen foreign armies were.