BANGUI, Dec 7: Christians fearing reprisal attacks from the Muslim ex-rebels who control Central African Republic fled on foot by the thousands Saturday, as others ventured outside for the first in time in days only to bury their dead after the worst violence to rack the lawless country in months.
French armoured personnel carriers and troops from the regional African peacekeeping mission roared at high speed down the roads of the capital, Bangui, as families carrying palm fronds pushed coffins in carts on the road’s shoulder. In a sign of the mounting tensions, others walking briskly on the streets carried bow-and-arrows and machetes.
Former coloniser France has deployed more than 1,000 troops in the country in an effort to stabilise a crisis that the French foreign minister has warned is “on the verge of genocide.”
The local Red Cross says it has gathered over 280 bodies in recent days, although the perilous security had made it impossible to access some of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods.
Overnight, French reinforcements entered Central African Republic by road from Cameroon to the west as others ventured northward out of Bangui for the first time since a UN Security Council on Thursday authorised a more muscular international military role to quell the violence, said Col Gilles Jaron, a French military spokesman in Paris.
France now has 1,200 troops in the country, completing plans to double its deployment since Thursday, he said, declining to specify where the new forces were headed beyond the capital. Hundreds are conducting round-the-clock patrols in Bangui.
Aid workers ventured back out into the streets Saturday to collect bloated bodies that had lay uncollected in the heat since Thursday, when Christian fighters known as the anti-balaka who oppose the country’s ruler descended on the capital in a coordinated attack on several mostly Muslim neighbourhoods.
Residents of Christian neighbourhoods said the ex-rebels known as Seleka later carried out reprisal attacks, going house-to-house in search of alleged combatants and firing at civilians who merely strayed into the wrong part of town. (Agencies)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel