Local sources said about 100 insurgents briefly occupied Kisangani radio station before being repelled by RCD forces.

The RCD has not signed up for a power-sharing agreement reached last month.

Under the new deal, President Joseph Kabila has allied his administration with the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement.

Jean Fidel, a journalist for a private Kisangani radio station, Amani, told the Associated Press that about 20 local residents had been "executed" during searches by rebels since the uprising.

He said the dead included one woman and her child.

A UN spokesman in the capital Kinshasa, Hamadoun Toure, said an uprising against rebels controlling Kisangani had claimed more than 20 lives there.

City still tense

He described the situation in the country's third-largest city as still "tense".

He said UN workers in Kisangani had resumed normal work, which was suspended immediately after the uprising.

Contacted in Kisangani, the Reverend Celestin Bwanga said 1,000 residents had turned out in response to the call by the mutineers.

Reverend Bwanga said a mob killed two people before the Rwandan-backed rebels opened fire, killing four local residents.

The UN Security Council has called for the demilitarisation of Kisangani as part of the Congolese peace process.