Nairobi  - Over 90,000 civilians who fled heavy fighting in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo are unaccounted for, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Friday.

UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said that the agency had taken advantage of a lull in the fighting to enter the Rutshuru area, 80 kilometres north of the Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

The UNCHR team found that three UNCHR-run camps for internally displaced in the area - Nyongera, Kasasa and Dumez - had been forcefully emptied and destroyed.

Three other makeshift camps were found to be empty.

Fighting between rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and government forces exploded into full-scale conflict in October.

The rebels came on the verge of taking Goma during their surge.

Well over 250,000 civilians have been displaced since August as a result of the clashes, aid agencies say.

Civilians caught between the warring forces have suffered atrocities at the hands of all parties, according to the UN. Many civilians are struggling to survive, but humanitarian aid has been limited by the poor security situation.

Nkunda called a ceasefire and pulled his troops back from the front lines in mid-November after meeting Olusegun Obasanjo, a UN peace envoy and former Nigerian president.

Despite the ceasefire, clashes have continued with government forces and the pro-government Mai Mai militia.

Reports Friday said that the Congolese government had agreed for the first time to meet the CNDP directly.

Talks to formalise the ceasefire are set to take place in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, on Monday, Congolese Foreign Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba said in Goma.

The UN has agreed to send another 3,000 troops to bolster the 17,000-strong peacekeeping mission - known as MONUC - in the DR Congo. The peacekeepers are hopelessly overstretched by the conflict.

Nkunda says he is fighting to protect Tutsis from Hutu militias who fled to the DR Congo after Tutsi forces seized power in Rwanda.

The armed Hutu groups were implicated in the 1994 massacres in Rwanda, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

There are fears that the conflict could draw in other countries and reignite the 1998-2003 war, which UN agencies say caused the deaths of over 5 million people in the DR Congo.

The DR Congo government accused Rwanda of backing Nkunda. (dpa)