Militia fighters in eastern Congo attacked a UN peacekeeping base on Friday, triggering clashes that left two of the fighters dead and two peacekeepers slightly wounded, the UN mission was quoted by CBC News as saying.

Thirty-four rebels from a Mai-Mai militia have been killed during fighting with Congo's army in the past week, local army spokesperson Jules Ngongo said, a spike in violence he attributed to an army crackdown on the militia's harassment of local residents.

Friday's attack, in which two rebels were also wounded, was a rare frontal assault on UN forces charged with protecting civilians in Congo's east, where dozens of armed groups exploit mineral resources and prey on local residents. 

"Very early this morning, about 30 Mai-Mai attacked," said mission spokesperson Florence Marchal, adding that UN forces drove off the assailants. It was not immediately clear which Mai-Mai group attacked or what their objective was.

The Mai-Mai comprise a number of armed bands that originally formed to resist Rwandan invasions in the 1990s.

Source: MENA