Tag: CAR crisis

Two people died of gunshot wounds in fighting in the capital of Central African Republic on Monday as the sound of fire from machine guns and heavier weapons resounded across Bangui, witnesses and medical authorities said.

Heavily armed members of the former rebel group Seleka took six police officers hostage in Bangui on Sunday, Jean Serge Bokassa, the minister of territorial administration and public security, told Reuters.

It was not clear if the shooting and kidnapping were linked.

The gunfire died down as night fell, witnesses said.

“We demand the liberation of the officers who were taken hostage. The government will do everything possible to free them,” Bokassa said.

Insecurity has persisted in the months since President Faustin-Archange Touadéra was sworn in in March, after winning an election intended to draw a line under inter-communal and inter-religious violence that involved the mainly Muslim Seleka and began in 2013.

Medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) will suspend non-essential activity for three days, starting on Wednesday, to protest the killing of one of its drivers in an ambush, its country director said on Monday.

It is the group’s second suspension of operations in the country in a little over a month after acts of violence.

The government of Central African Republic said on Thursday it rejected a ceasefire deal made in Kenya between two militia groups aimed at ending more than one year of clashes and attacks that had killed thousands.

Few details have emerged about the talks between the mainly Muslim Seleka alliance and the “anti-balaka” militia who oppose them, though the two sides conducted low-level and sporadic peace negotiations for much of last year.

“The government categorically rejects the Nairobi accord because it was not associated with the discussions in any way. It is not a real accord, rather it’s a series of grievances from the two armed groups which hold the country hostage,” Communications Minister, Georges Adrien Poussou, told Reuters.

CAR has been gripped by violence since the Seleka rebelled and seized power in March 2013. The group was forced to stand aside last year having failed to contain clashes with the “anti-Balaka” and other violence.

The Seleka occupies much of the north and an interim government is struggling to assert its authority.

European Union peacekeepers took charge of security at Central African Republic’s main airport on Wednesday in their first major operation to try and end months of sectarian slaughter.
Just ahead of the handover, four people were killed overnight and on Wednesday morning in the capital, the local branch of the Red Cross said.
One of the dead, a Muslim, was decapitated, his heart ripped out and his body mutilated, a Reuters witness said.
The EU peacekeepers are meant to share the burden of around 2,000 French troops and 5,000 African peacekeepers already in the country who have so far failed to stop the bloodshed.
Fighting surged when mostly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power a year ago in the majority Christian nation, launching a wave of killings and rights abuses, said United Nations and aid officials.
Mainly Christian groups formed what they called “anti-balaka” self-defence militias who have also been accused of atrocities that have continued even though the rebels stepped aside in January.
French troops handed control of Bangui airport over to the EU peacekeepers, who are also commanded by a French officer, Major-General Philippe Ponties, at midday local time, the EU said in a statement.
Thousands of civilians have taken refuge in a sprawling settlement of cardboard shacks and tarpaulins beside the airport to escape the violence that rights groups have described as ethnic cleansing and warned may spread insecurity in a fragile region.

Emergency evacuations of the first of thousands of foreigners stranded in the conflict-ridden Central African Republic are due to begin on Saturday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it would start airlifting 800 Chadians from a makeshift camp in the capital, Bangui.
Some 33,000 Africans from neighbouring countries needed urgent help, it said.
CAR’s interim President Michel Djotodia resigned on Friday over the fighting between Muslim and Christian militia.
Mr. Djotodia, CAR’s first Muslim leader, seized power last year. Since then 20 per cent of the population have been forced to flee the violence.
BBC reports that at least 1,000 people have died since the clashes broke out in December.
The African Union now has some 4,000 peacekeepers in the country and France has deployed 1,600 troops to try to restore peace.