Hutu rebels attacked an army post in the Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile east, killing at least 19 people including five soldiers, the army said Thursday. Nearly 150 fighters from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebel group staged a pre-dawn attack Wednesday on a military position in Nord-Kivu province, Vianney Kazarama, the army spokesman in the region said. They killed five government troops and eight civilians, he said, adding: 'We killed six' rebels. The attack occurred in Burungu, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Goma, the main city of the region, Major Kazarama told selfnews. UN troops are particularly active in the two eastern Kivu provinces, backing government forces battling Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom have been based in eastern DR Congo since fleeing their own country after the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The Hutu rebels are accused both of taking part in the genocide of about 800,000 minority Tutsis in Rwanda and of atrocities against the population in eastern DRC, where some Congolese government troops are also accused of widespread human rights abuses. The UN peacekeeping mission MONUC was initially deployed in 2001 when the DRC was still in the grips of a 1998-2003 war that embroiled the armies of more than half a dozen other African countries. Although ranked among the world's poorest countries, DRC, with a population of 68 million, is blessed with a cornucopia of natural resources and prized mineral wealth, including copper, cobalt, gold, coltan (a highly sought after metallic ore used in consumer electronics), tin and zinc. 