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