KAMPALA - Uganda has stepped up monitoring of its border with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after renewed clashes there between government forces and militiamen, a Ugandan military spokesman said on Tuesday.

The latest violence broke out last week in lawless eastern DRC's Ituri region, triggering fears anti-Ugandan rebels based in its jungles might slip across the border to launch attacks.

"We have increased our surveillance in the area because we suspect the enemies would use the confusion in the Congo to infiltrate us," Ugandan army spokesman Lt. Tabaro Kiconco said.

Kampala says the remote, mineral-rich forests of eastern DRC are home to more than 1,000 anti-Ugandan rebels, including the Allied Democratic Forces and People's Redemption Army.

Kiconco said last week's fighting took place in the Blue Mountains overlooking the Congolese shores of Lake Albert, where both groups of insurgents are thought to have camps.

DRC on June 18 is due to hold its first democratic election in four decades, to try and bring order after years of war and chaos in the vast central African nation.
The former Belgian colony's 1998-2003 war sucked in six African countries and sparked the world's worst humanitarian crisis in 60 years. Since it began, some 4 million people have died, mostly from hunger and disease.

U.N. peacekeepers are trying to restore order in the east, but have had to contend with ill-disciplined national army forged from various rival armed factions, with many dissenters.

Refugees from the violence often spill into Uganda.

Some 20,000 Congolese villagers fled over the border in January to escape clashes further south in Congo between DRC troops and fighters loyal to a renegade ex-army commander.