The UN force in the Central African Republic assured, Wednesday April 17, that around thirty civilians had been killed in twelve days in different regions of the country, urging rebels and self-defense militias to “immediately cease hostilities”.
A new 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 mission for stabilization in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) “strongly condemns the despicable killings of around thirty civilians during attacks” between April 2 and 14 in the southeast, south and west of the country, she said in a statement. The Minusca peacekeeping force, established since 2014, today numbers some 14,000 peacekeepers.
On April 2 in Lime, a locality located about fifteen kilometers from Bohong (Ouham-Pendé prefecture, North-West), alleged elements of the rebel movement Group 3R (for “return, reclamation and rehabilitation”) “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” April 13 “by residents of the village of Tabane”, near Zemio (South-East), still according to Minusca. And April 14, “force discovered bodies in Pologbota village”some 300 kilometers further west, added Minusca, without specifying the number or the circumstances of their deaths.
“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 states that “the security situation has deteriorated in recent weeks” in the Haut-Mbomou prefecture, where Zemio is located.
In December 2020, the president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, called on Moscow to help in the face of rebels who were marching on Bangui. Hundreds of men from the Wagner Group 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.