Red Cross workers have recovered 44 bodies from the streets of Central African Republic’s capital Bangui following two days of inter-religious fighting.
Six Chadian peacekeepers have also been killed in the former French colony, while judicial authorities said they had uncovered a mass grave with 30 bodies, many of them showing signs of torture, near a military base used by Seleka rebels.
The rebels seized power in March, unleashing a wave of looting and killing on the mostly Christian population. Thousands of French and African troops have struggled to contain a flare-up in violence in the past week.
Militias
The mostly Muslim Seleka and Christian self-defence militias have carried out tit-for-tat attacks on each other and on the local population.
Georgios Georgantas, head of a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the 44 bodies were probably only a fraction of those killed in Bangui in the past two days given that his team had been unable to go into parts of the city.
Many say the bloodshed has little to do with religion in a nation where Muslims and Christians long lived in peace. Instead they blame a political battle for control over resources in one of Africa’s most weakly-governed states.– (Reuters)