The UN force in the Central African Republic assured, Wednesday April 17, that around thirty civilians were killed in twelve days in different regions of the country, urging rebels and self-defense militias to “immediately cease hostilities”.
Yet another extremely deadly civil war, which began in 2013, considerably decreased in intensity after 2018. But it gradually transformed into scattered and sporadic clashes between, on one side, rebel or predatory armed movements and , on the other, the army, its Russian supporters from the Wagner group and certain self-defense militias which serve as their auxiliaries.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (Minusca) “strongly condemns the despicable killings of around thirty civilians during attacks perpetrated” between April 2 and 14 in the southeast, the south and the west of the country, she said in a press release. The Minusca peacekeeping force, which arrived in 2014, now numbers some 14,000 peacekeepers.
On April 2 in Lime (north-west), suspected elements of the rebel movement Return, Reclamation and Rehabilitation (3R) “massacred 24 civilians, including women and children,” writes Minusca, without further details. Then “the bodies of three civilians as well as that of a fourth person were found” on April 13 “by residents of the village of Tabane”, near Zémio (south-east), again according to Minusca. And on April 14, “the force discovered bodies in the village of Pologbota”, some 300 km further west, added Minusca, without specifying the number or the circumstances of their death.
“Minusca urges armed groups and self-defense groups […] to immediately cease hostilities and violence, the main victims of which are civilians,” concludes the UN mission, which indicates that “the security situation is ‘has deteriorated in recent weeks’ in the Haut-Mbomou prefecture, where Zémio is located.
In December 2020, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra called on Moscow to help in the face of rebels marching on Bangui. Hundreds of Wagner’s men then came to reinforce the hundreds of paramilitaries already present. Since then, international NGOs and the UN have accused the rebels as well as the Central African military and Wagner’s paramilitaries of regularly committing crimes and abuses against civilians.
