A Congolese rebel commander in Goma, Mr Jean-Pierre Ondekane, denied yesterday that the insurgents were facing a general offensive in the former Zaire from government troops and their allies.
Sources in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, described the fighting as "terrible". They said government troops and their allies were attacking Kalemie, in the south-east, and were near the rebel-held city of Kisangani in the north-east.
Government troops, which last month received military support from Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, were also said to be "at the gates of Goma", the rebels' eastern stronghold on the border with Rwanda.
However, Mr Ondekane said that the fighting supposedly taking place between Kisangani and Lubutu, some 200km south-east of Goma, "does not exist".
He rejected government claims to have captured Lubutu, saying a plane was about to leave Goma to take supplies to the rebels there, who had also pushed on past Lubutu to the village of Mayala.
"Kalemie is calm," he said, adding that the rebels were now at the village of Viura, about 50km south of Kalemie in the mineral-rich province of Katanga.
Mr Ondekane said that yesterday the insurgents were at Kibumba, a village about 25km north of Goma, pursuing Rwandan Hutus and Congolese Mai-Mai warriors who attacked Goma on Monday.
The rebels repulsed them after a six-hour battle. On Monday evening Mr Ondekane exhibited prisoners who were dressed in civilian clothing and said no allied troops were in the Goma region.
Separate reports said rebel soldiers were going house-to-house in Goma yesterday to flush out attackers who engaged them in Monday's battle.
A prisoner who identified himself as a former corporal in the Rwandan Hutu army defeated by Tutsis in 1994 said that 900 Rwandan Hutus, all former soldiers and militiamen, crossed the border before dawn on Monday to attack Goma with the intention of then occupying the adjoining Rwandan town of Gisenyi and continuing on towards Kigali.
He said those not taken prisoner by the rebels fled to the heavily forested Virunga National Park just north of Goma, or back into Rwanda, where they frequently attack units of Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated army.
The Rwandan Vice-President and Defence Minister, Gen Paul Kagame, said fighting took place in Gisenyi, too, but "our troops gave the [Rwandan] rebels a bloody nose".
"They were taken by surprise because our troops were at a very high state of preparedness," Gen Kagame said.
The population in Goma of 300,000 to 400,000 people includes Tutsis, Hutus and a variety of Bantu tribes.
A rebel military spokesman, Mr Carlos Okolo, described the attackers living in Goma as "infiltrators", but many Goma residents have made it clear they oppose the Tutsi-led rebels.
"We're hoping they'll attack again," said one. "If the rebels were native Congolese, that would be all right, but we don't like foreigners dictating to us."
Many of the rebel officers are Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan ancestry known as Banyamulenge, who are still considered as foreigners by the Bantu tribes.
More than 100 Congo government soldiers arrived in the western Tanzanian town of Kigoma at the weekend after fleeing heavy fighting, according to a local official.
Reports reaching Dar-es-Salaam quoted some of the soldiers as saying that they had fled heavy fighting against Tutsi-led rebels in eastern Congo.
Mr Lunda Bululu, a political co-ordinator for the rebel forces, claimed yesterday that the Sudanese government had sent 2,000 soldiers to aid forces loyal to the Kabila government.