44 dead found in Central African Republic
29 Dec 2013 4:54 AM IST
Six Chadian peacekeepers have also been killed in the former French colony, while judicial authorities said they had uncovered a mass grave with 30 bodies, many of them showing signs of torture, near a military base used by Seleka rebels.
The rebels seized power in March, unleashing a wave of looting and killing on the mostly Christian population.
Thousands of French and African troops have struggled to contain a flare-up in violence in the last week.
The mostly Muslim Seleka and Christian self-defence militias have carried out tit-for-tat attacks on each other and on the local population.
Georgios Georgantas, head of an International Committee of the Red Cross delegation, said the 44 bodies were probably only a fraction of those killed in Bangui in the last two days given that his team had been unable to go into parts of the city. ‘Violence has been at extremely high levels,’ Georgantas said on telephone.
‘We have information about more bodies in certain parts of town which we have been unable to access because the fighting was so intense.’
A representative of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres at Bangui’s main hospital said it had seen more than 50 people since Wednesday night with gunshot or machete wounds from the fighting which raged for hours across Bangui.
A spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping mission (MISCA) said Chadian peacekeepers were attacked by gunmen in the Gabongo neighbourhood near the airport on Wednesday.
The rebels seized power in March, unleashing a wave of looting and killing on the mostly Christian population.
Thousands of French and African troops have struggled to contain a flare-up in violence in the last week.
The mostly Muslim Seleka and Christian self-defence militias have carried out tit-for-tat attacks on each other and on the local population.
Georgios Georgantas, head of an International Committee of the Red Cross delegation, said the 44 bodies were probably only a fraction of those killed in Bangui in the last two days given that his team had been unable to go into parts of the city. ‘Violence has been at extremely high levels,’ Georgantas said on telephone.
‘We have information about more bodies in certain parts of town which we have been unable to access because the fighting was so intense.’
A representative of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres at Bangui’s main hospital said it had seen more than 50 people since Wednesday night with gunshot or machete wounds from the fighting which raged for hours across Bangui.
A spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping mission (MISCA) said Chadian peacekeepers were attacked by gunmen in the Gabongo neighbourhood near the airport on Wednesday.
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