SOME 70,000 people have fled their homes near the UgandanZairean border following intensified fighting there, the official New Vision newspaper reported yesterday.

Military sources said the fighting, which was in its third day, was between Ugandan rebels based in eastern Zaire supported by Zairean troops on the one side, and Ugandan government forces aided by Zairean Tutsi rebels on the other, according to the paper.

Military sources in Kampala said the invaders were given cover from Thursday by Zairean forces across the border through heavy artillery bombardments.

Other press reports reaching Kampala said the Ugandan army was commandeering civilian vehicles, especially lorries, to ferry much needed reinforcements to the battle front in the border district of Kasese, 440 km west of the Ugandan capital.

However, many truck owners were fleeing to evade commandeering of their vehicles to rush a large number of troops and war materials to the border to help stem the fighting.

The reports said the rebels have dug in at two townships, and that in a battle on Thursday they managed to overrun a Ugandan military detachment at Nyabirongo, but did not give details of casualties on either side.

The daily Monitor newspaper also reported yesterday that 10 government soldiers, including a commander who was not identified, were critically wounded and rushed to hospital in Mbarara in the southeast.

But New Vision, quoting military sources, said seven soldiers were admitted to a nearby hospital on the Ugandan side of the copperbelt, but did not give figures for the rebel casualties.

New Vision also said that the estimated 70,000 people who had fled their homes were now sleeping in the open inside Kasese town. "A whole population in the eastern Zairean fighting zone is on the move, fleeing from the battlefront," the paper quoted a local official as saying, and pointed out that most of them, looking tired after a long walk, were women and children.

Some of the refugees have been housed at a Roman Catholic seminary in Kasese.

Local authorities in Kasese have also lost communication with the border posts and trading centres at Mpondwe and Bwera, which were attacked by the rebels.