Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Congo's army of committing war crimes against civilians including rapes and killings, charges the government rejected as "lies".
Congolese soldiers and the UN peacekeeping force MONUC have been conducting joint operations in eastern Congo targeting Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) Hutu rebels, including leaders of neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
But New York-based HRW, whose report was published as UN Security Council envoys were visiting the region, said local troops were committing atrocities in the area's remote North Kivu province.
"The Congolese army is responsible for widespread and vicious abuses against its own people that amount to war crimes," Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher in HRW's Africa Division, said in a statement.
HRW accused government soldiers of raping more than 143 women and girls since January - more than half the total number of rape cases documented by HRW researchers in the country.
The army has torched hundreds of houses, schools and health centres and civilians have been killed or arrested, often only being freed when they have paid soldiers, HRW said.
"The government should take urgent action to end these abuses. A military operation that targets the very people the government claims to be protecting can only lead to disaster," it said, adding that local civilians had told them they feared government forces as much as the Rwandan militias.
Government forces, already a messy collection of factions from Congo's 1998-2003 war that have long been accused of indiscipline, have swelled in the east to about 60,000 with the recent integration of former Tutsi rebels.
A government spokesman rejected the charges as lies.
"This is nearly word for word the statement of the FDLR. We now have proof that HRW works with the FDLR," said Information Minister Lambert Mende. "I think there will be consequences," he added without elaborating.
Reuters