Central African Republic violence sees thousands flee
The Associated Press
Last Updated:Dec 07, two thousand thirteen 7:59 PM ET
More than Ten,000 people have sought protection in the Don Bosco Center outside Bangui, Central African Republic, fearing reprisal attacks from the Muslim ex-rebels. Jerome Delay/The Associated Press
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France and the African Union on Saturday announced plans to deploy several thousand more troops into embattled Central African Republic, as thousands of Christians fearing reprisal attacks sought refuge from the Muslim former rebels who now control the country after days of violence left almost four hundred people dead — and possibly more.
French armored personnel carriers and troops from an AU-backed peacekeeping mission roared at high speed down Bangui’s major roads, as families carrying palm fronds shoved 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.
Concluding an aptly-timed and long-planned conference on African security in Paris, President Francois Hollande said France was raising its deployment to 1,600 on Saturday — four hundred more than very first announced. Later, after a meeting of regional nations about Central African Republic, his office said that African Union nations agreed to increase their total deployment to 6,000 — up from about Two,500 now, and almost dual the projected rollout of Trio,600 by year-end.
Amid fresh massacres on Thursday, UN Security Council adopted a resolution that permits for a more muscular international effort to quell months or unrest in the country. Troops from France, the country’s former colonial overseer, were patrolling roads in Bangui and fanning out into the troubled northwest on Saturday.
“This force is going to deploy as quickly as possible and everywhere there are risks for the population, with the African coerces that are present — presently Two,500 soldiers,” Hollande said, referring to the enlargened French presence. “In what I believe will be a very brief period we will be able to stop all exactions and massacres.”
Death toll rises
In an interview with France-24 TV, Hollande said the AU reinforcements would arrive “in the coming days,” without specifying. He said 1,600 French troops was “enough: There won’t be more,” and added that they would remain as planned for about six months — however a residual force of five hundred to six hundred might stay thereafter.
‘The Seleka will kill us all.’ – Francois Yayi
Word of the fatter deployments came as human rights groups continued the grisly business of counting and collecting figures of those killed in latest massacres. The death toll in the capital from the latest fighting rose on Saturday to 394, said Antoine Mbao Bogo of the local Crimson Cross.
Central African Republic President Michel Djotodia called on former rebels who are now integrated into the national army to stay off the streets now being patrolled by French and regional compels. Presidential spokesman Man Simplice Kodegue said those who violated the order would be penalized.
One of the world’s poorest countries, Central African Republic has been wracked for decades by coups and rebellions. In March, a Muslim rebel alliance known as Seleka overthrew the Christian president of a decade. At that time, religious ideology played little role in the power grab. The rebels soon installed Djotodia as president, however he exerted little control over coerces on the ground. He has since formally disbanded the Seleka coalition, but the former rebels now consider themselves the army.
Central African Republic President Michel Djotodia is the former leader of the Seleka rebel alliance that overthrew his predecessor. (Joe Penney/Reuters)
Now, sectarian strife has grown. On Saturday, aid workers returned to the streets to collect bloated figures that had lay uncollected in the warmth since Thursday, when Christian fighters known as the anti-balaka, who oppose Djotodia, descended on the capital in a coordinated attack on several mostly Muslim neighbourhoods. Residents of Christian neighbourhoods said Seleka have counter-attacked by going house-to-house in search of alleged combatants and firing at civilians who merely strayed into the wrong part of town.
Zumbeti Thierry Tresor, 23, was among those slain after he attempted to cross through another neighbourhood to visit family members in another part of Bangui. Seleka fighters shot him in the neck and belly, his friends said. On Saturday, neighbors hiked the rocky path to his one-room home where his covered assets lay on the floor underneath neatly dangled music posters.
Outside the front door, his wifey wailed hysterically, gripping their 3-year-old daughter in her lap as neighbours crowded around her. Alongside their house, a team of a dozen studs with tucks and shovels dug Tresor’s grave under the shade of a tree.
“We want the French army to come and protect us,” said Tresor’s friend, Francois Yayi. “We have no police to call. The Seleka will kill us all.”
He and his friends begin counting on their fingers the number of neighbours slain amid the latest spasm of bloodshed. At least ten they determine have died since Thursday.
Thousands flee
As families mourned their dead, others fled by the thousands to the few known safe places in the capital — the airport guarded by French troops and the grounds of a Catholic center run by the Salesians of Don Bosco. About Trio,000 people had fled to the sophisticated on Thursday when the fighting began and that number swelled to 12,000 by Saturday.
Relatives mourn a slain man in Bangui, Central African Republic. (Jerome Delay/Associated Press)
“We have no water, no food, no medicine — we have nothing,” said Pierre Claver Agbetiafan, looking around the centre where he works.
As dusk fell, hundreds of people began lining up outside the mission’s doors for a safe place to sleep, carting foam mattresses and plastic buckets of food on their goes. Some even toted wheeled luggage, not knowing when they could comeback. Every bit of ground near the tennis courts was crowded with families preparing for a night on damp ground under the open sky. The air packed with smoke as women tended puny fires to prepare dinner.
Judith Lea, 47, came with a family of twenty including her 3-day-old grandson to escape violence in their neighbourhood on the north side of the capital. As people lodged in for the night, she and the other female relatives argued over what to name the little boy who has spent almost his entire life in a displacement camp.
“When the Seleka rebels came to the house, they stole his blankets and all the little things we had bought for him,” Lea said, opened up out on the ground to rest. “When this war is over, what will we do? He is cold and hasn’t had his vaccines yet.”