GOMA, Congo -- Furious mobs stoned U.N. peacekeepers' compounds yesterday and thousands of desperate people fled advancing rebel troops as chaos returned to eastern Congo, fueled by festering hatreds left over from the Rwandan genocide and the country's civil wars.

In what appeared to be a major retreat, hundreds of government soldiers pulled back yesterday from the battlefront north of the provincial capital of Goma. Crowds of protesters threw rocks outside four U.N. compounds in Goma, venting outrage at what they claimed was a failure to protect them from rebels.

The U.N. said the commander of the embattled Congo peacekeeping force resigned yesterday after just a month.

Renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda has threatened to take Goma despite calls from the U.N. Security Council for him to respect a cease fire brokered by the U.N. in January. Nkunda charges that the Congolese government has not protected his minority Tutsi tribe from a Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping perpetrate the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. forces fought off an attack in the early hours of the morning yesterday against a military base, killing five of the assailants, in a neighborhood that was once a notorious Shiite militia stronghold.

The attackers opened fire on the joint U.S.-Iraqi security station at 1:20 a.m. in the eastern district of New Baghdad, the U.S. military statement reported. The soldiers returned fire, killing at least five of the assailants.

Hours later, a roadside bomb exploded in the same district, tearing through a minibus and killing three civilians and wounding six others, Iraqi police said. The U.S. military set the toll at only two dead.

The former Shiite militia stronghold saw fierce clashes between U.S.-Iraqi forces and extremists earlier this year. But such brazen attacks have been relatively rare since anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr declared a cease-fire.

One of the bombs struck a car carrying a doctor and his friend as they left his clinic near the Khillani Square in central Baghdad. The two men were killed and seven other people were wounded, police said.

DAKAR, Senegal -- A West African regional court found the government of Niger guilty yesterday of failing to protect a young woman who was sold into slavery at the age of 12.

The landmark ruling, which was delivered by a regional tribunal sitting in Niamey, Niger's capital, ordered the government to pay about $19,000 in damages to the woman, Hadijatou Mani, who is now 24.

Slavery is outlawed in Niger and the rest of Africa, but it persists in pockets of Niger, Mali and Mauritania. Anti-slavery organizations estimate that 43,000 people are enslaved in Niger alone.

Ms. Mani's experience was typical of the practice. She was born into a traditional slave class and given to Souleymane Naroua when she was 12 for about $500. Mani told court officials that Naroua forced her to work his fields for a decade. She also claimed that he raped her repeatedly over the years.

Ms. Mani brought her case to the court earlier this year, arguing that the Niger government had failed to enforce its antislavery laws.

"Nobody deserves to be enslaved," she said in a statement. "We are all equal and deserve to be treated the same. I hope that everybody in slavery today can find their freedom. No woman should suffer the way I did."