Colonel Dominique Demange, a spokesman for the UN force in Congo, said that two UN troops were wounded in a vicious gunfight yesterday about 20 miles north of Buia, the capital of the violent Ituri province.

"While on operation we were fired upon, so we immediately responded," Colonel Demange said.

Between 50 and 60 militia members had been confirmed dead - the greatest number of enemy combatants killed by peacekeepers since the Congo mission was created in 1999.

Eliane Nabaa, a UN spokeswoman, added: "This group continues to loot, kill and rape these people, making life miserable. It's time to put an end to this militia."

The operation involved more than 200 peacekeepers, two transport helicopters and armoured vehicles, Ms Nabaa said. UN troops also deployed an attack helicopter against the militiamen. The militia belonged to the ethnic Lendu group Nationalist and Integrationist Front, who have been terrorising villages of the rival Hema tribe for months.

The United Nations suspects that the same militia is responsible for slaying a platoon of nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers.

The Times reported today that the nine Bangladeshis had been severely mutilated by the time their bodies were recovered. Correspondent Xan Rice reported from the Kafe military camp, where the Bangladeshis were based, that the leader of the platoon had had his eyes gouged out, others had deep cuts to their knees, thighs and backs, and one man had had his head sliced open.

"They were definitely tortured," Lieutenant-Colonel Shahid Ul-Islam, acting head of the Kafe base, said. "It may have been after they were dead, but we think it may have happened while they were still alive.

Since December, Lendu militia have killed dozens of people, looted and burned homes and forced over 70,000 people to roam the hills in search of safety. Hundreds of peacekeepers were dispatched to several areas of the isolated, scenic territory to provide shelter, food and medicine.

However, after the slaying of the nine soldiers, the United Nations announced that it was suspending humanitarian assistance to 54,000 people due to increased violence.

The young Lendu fighters - who often wear wigs and women’s dresses in battle because they believe it will protect them from harm - are accused of massacring thousands of Hema in macabre village raids over the years.

Since 1999, fighting in the northeastern district of Ituri has killed more than 50,000 and forced 500,000 to flee their homes, UN officials and human rights groups say.

The Ituri conflict is a bloody sideshow to Congo’s five-year, six-nation war that ended in 2002 with the formation of a transitional government a year later, which has struggled to extend its authority to the long-ungoverned east.

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