Renewed fighting shattered any hopes of a speedy end to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday as rebels pushed on with an offensive hours after their leader said that he would observe a ceasefire.

The potholed road from the eastern town of Rwindi was filled with lorries carrying people away from a fresh rebel assault towards the regional capital, Goma, about 75 miles to the south.

Dozens of villages emptied during the attack which began on Sunday morning, just as General Laurent Nkunda told a United Nations envoy that his rebels were ready for peace.

Those fleeing blamed his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) for the fighting. “The war between the CNDP and the Government came to us yesterday morning,” said Alphonse Kayenga, sitting on crates of fish in the back of a lorry heading for safety. “We heard the guns and the explosions, so we prepared to leave. It was the CNDP that started it.”

Mr Kayenga left the village of Vitshumbi as government soldiers fell back after giving up their base in Rwindi. His family packed as many possessions as they could in baskets woven loosely from straw.

Bedrolls and bicycles were tied to the lorry. More than 30 people sat precariously above their possessions as they began the slow drive towards Goma, where the Government has been strengthening its defences.

A week after the last big clashes, the offensive was a reminder that the country’s confused web of conflicts will not disappear overnight On Sunday General Nkunda, who claims that his forces are protecting the region’s ethnic Tutsis, met Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian President now acting as a UN envoy, and insisted that he was observing a ceasefire. His public pronouncements have rarely matched reality. His forces remain camped about five miles from Goma, spreading fear through the population.

The UN mission to the country confirmed the latest rebel offensive. It condemned “these violations on the ground” and invited the two sides to “respect the ceasefire so as not to further worsen the humanitarian situation”.

The rebels insisted that their forces had first come under fire from the government soldiers, before taking the town of Rwindi. “Elements of [the government] FARDC based within Vitshumbi have used heavy artillery on the positions of the CNDP around Rwindi. These provocations aim to compromise the assets of the meeting of this Sunday,” Bertrand Bisimwa, a rebel spokesman, said.

Aid agencies continue to give warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis, with up to 250,000 people forced from their homes by the fighting.

The eastern region should be the country’s bread basket. Its fertile soil and plentiful rain bring rich harvests of maize, beans and cabbages as well as valuable cash crops of coffee. But aid lorries trundle along its dirt roads with food for the displaced.

The region, around the borders with Uganda and Rwanda, has not had the peace enjoyed elsewhere since the civil war ended in 2003. Its rich-resources, including a third of the world’s tin ore, and the attentions of neighbours have kept conflict simmering.

Many suspect that Rwanda has been backing General Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels as a means of securing the mineral reserves. Those allegations were dismissed yesterday by Paul Kagame, the Rwandan President.

“It’s either exaggerated or distorted to imply that Rwanda is holding a switch that will switch off Nkunda or that Rwanda initially switched him on,” he told a news conference in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

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