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Chad troops kill civilians in Central African Republic: residents

25 February 2014 00:49 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Chadian peacekeepers shot dead three civilians in a Christian neighborhood of the capital of Central African Republic on Monday, local residents said, APA reports quoting Reuters.

In another incident overnight, two Chadian peacekeepers were shot and killed and another wounded, said Elio Yao, a spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force, MISCA.

Bangui's Christian population accuses the Muslim Chadians of backing Muslim Seleka rebels - some of whom came from Chad - since they seized power in the mostly Christian Central African Republic and embarked on months of looting and killing.

Christian militia have carried out brutal reprisals against the Muslim minority. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, Human Rights Watch says, in violence that 2,000 French and 6,000 African Union peacekeepers have been unable to stop.

Al Qaeda's North African wing threatened at the weekend to punish France for allowing Muslims to be killed. Tensions flared anew in the past few days in the Christian neighborhood of Combattants in Bangui, where Chadian peacekeepers have clashed with residents and local militia.

"I condemn the Chadian forces. They said they came here to restore peace but it's them who are killing us," said Macnel Ndotowe, a resident of Combattants. A spokesman for the Red Cross said its volunteers had recovered bodies from the Combattants neighborhood but could not confirm how they were killed. Yao said MISCA was investigating the killing of the two Chadian peacekeepers and it was not clear whether this was connected to the wider conflict.

Local Christians accused Chadian troops of preying upon them. The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have also cited evidence of this.

Humanitarian aid workers say, however, that the security situation has improved in Bangui in recent weeks, after most of the city's Muslim population fled northward in the face of attacks by the Christian militia.

"One must understand that getting Central African Republic back on track will take time," General Francisco Soriano, the commander of French forces, told Europe 1 radio. "But we must not ignore the progress made ... The massacres and killing that we saw on our arrival have radically dropped."