By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA, June 5 (Reuters) - Nine villagers kidnapped by Rwandan rebels in eastern Congo have been freed by the army, as it tracks those responsible for the massacre of 18 villagers, an army spokesman said on Tuesday.

One hostage was killed during several days of fighting between the army and suspected members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group dominated by Hutus who fled Rwandan in the wake of a 1994 genocide.

The freed hostages included six people seized by the FDLR during raids last week in South Kivu province, amid rising violence in the volatile border region which has sown fears of a return to war. The three others had been held for six months.

"These operations are continuing. We are on the trail of the assailants. They are suffering heavy losses," Lieutenant Ambroise Kasanda wa Kasanda told Reuters.

The FDLR was formed by Hutu militants who fled to Democratic Republic of Congo when Tutsi rebels seized control of Rwanda in the wake of the genocide. From April to July 1994, Hutu militants slaughtered around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Members of an FDLR faction known as the "Rastas" hacked or clubbed to death 18 sleeping villagers in Kanyola, an area 50 km (30 miles) west of the provincial capital Bukavu on May 27.

Another 22 people were injured and a dozen more kidnapped in the attack, the worst in South Kivu in nearly two years.

Days later, suspected FDLR took at least six more villagers hostage in neighbouring Kabare district. The raids were in reprisal for United Nations-backed Congolese army operations against the FDLR a month before.

Congo's first democratic elections in four decades in 2006 were meant to draw a line under a 1998-2003 war that killed an estimated 4 million people, mainly through hunger and disease.

At his inauguration in December, President Joseph Kabila vowed to deal with the security problems in the east but the area remains the scene of regular violence at the hands of local militias, foreign rebel groups, and the army itself.

Rising violence in both North and South Kivu, long considered breeding grounds for regional instability, has sown fears of a return to war in the region. The provinces were the launching points for Rwandan-backed invasions in 1996 and 1998.

Last week, Monsignor Francois-Xavier Maroy, the Catholic Archbishop of Bukavu, warned a new war in eastern Congo could break out soon unless the Congolese army and Congo's 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission intervene to prevent it.

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