France ‘likely’ to extend mission in CAR

Reuters/Paris/Bangui

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said that the UN would probably have to renew a mandate for French troops to restore order in Central African Republic (CAR) when it expires in May because of continued violence there.

France deployed 1,600 troops to its former colony in December to stem violence between Christian militias and largely Muslim Seleka rebels who ousted president Francois Bozize last March.

Asked during a radio interview whether France’s UN mandate, granted on December 5, would have to be renewed, Le Drian said: “Probably.”

He said that the French mission had helped ease tensions in Central African Republic, a landlocked nation of 4.5mn people, and that the security was improving day by day.

“The situation in Bangui has more or less stabilised,” Le Drian told RTL radio. “In the rest of the country it is much more complicated.”

France had hoped to quickly hand sole responsibility for security to the African Union peacekeeping force MISCA, which has deployed over 5,300 troops to Central African Republic, including soldiers from Rwanda, Burundi, Chad and Cameroon.

Close to 1mn people, or a quarter of the population, have been displaced by clashes that began when Seleka rebels embarked on a looting and killing spree after seizing power.

Christian self-defence groups known as “anti-balaka” (anti-machete) took up arms against them. The UN estimates that more than 2,000 people have been killed in the violence.

In a sign of tensions running high in the capital, government soldiers on Wednesday lynched a man they suspected of having been a rebel.

The lynching took place minutes after interim President Catherine Samba-Panza called for reconciliation in an address to troops, and was condemned by France and the UN.

Both have called for an investigation and appropriate sanctions.

“The incidents yesterday are unacceptable. They must be investigated and punished,” General Babacar Gaye, UN envoy in the country, told a news conference on Thursday.

And yesterday a mob lynched a Muslim after he fell off a crowded lorry taking frightened civilians out of the strife-torn capital, witnesses said.

A large convoy of lorries and taxis packed with Muslims fleeing Christian vigilantes headed north from Bangui under a slew of insults from angry residents, locals said.

The mob set on the victim after he fell off one of the lorries and hacked his body to pieces, which still lay by the side of the road by late morning, an AFP photographer saw.

Christian “anti-balaka” vigilantes tried to attack a second vehicle in the convoy, but they dispersed when troops from an African peacekeeping force, MISCA, fired warning shots, an AFP reporter saw.

Samba-Panza said in her speech on Wednesday that she hoped to restore order within a month, though Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned Seleka fighters who fled the capital have regrouped in the northeast and begun attacks on civilians.