BANGUI, Central African Republic: The United Nation’s mission in the Central African Republic Wednesday urged rebels and militias to immediately cease hostilities that, it said, have left at least 30 dead this month.
The bloody civil war that erupted in 2013 has seen a pause since 2018 but sporadic outbursts continue between armed rebel groups and the army, which is supported by militia groups and the Russian Wagner group.
World NGOs and the UN regularly accuse all participants in the fighting of committing crimes and abuses against the civilian population.
The UN’s MINUSCA mission in a post on X Wednesday said that it “strongly condemns the vile killings perpetrated by armed elements this April.”
MINUSCA’s peacekeeping force was deployed in 2014 and has some 14,000 soldiers from a number of countries in the Central African Republic.
In a communique, MINUSCA said that on April 2 “presumed elements” of the 3R rebel movement “massacred 24 civilians, including women and children,” in Lime, the town in the north-west of the country.
MINUSCA said the bodies of four civilians were spotted on April 13 in the south-east, and on April 14 an unspecified number of dead were found in the country’s west.
“MINUSCA exhorts armed groups and self-defence forces to immediately cease hostilities and violence of which civilians are the principal victims,” it said in the communique.
President Faustin Archange Touadera, in December 2020, asked Russia for help as rebels advanced on the capital Bangui, and hundreds of Wagner paramilitaries arrived to beef up the several hundred already present in the country.
