Bangui (Central African Republic): Clashes between rival armed groups in Bria, a strategic town in eastern Central African Republic, have left dozens dead, a senior official said Tuesday.
“There are about 50 dead. Some bodies were immediately buried by relatives, so it is difficult to give a precise figure,” said the prefect of Haute-Kotto department, Evariste Binguinidji.
“After mediation with UN peacekeeping forces sent to the area, the town is calm. The armed groups have withdrawn their men from the town centre and displaced people have started to return,” he added.
The clashes are the latest test to a nearly year-old agreement aimed at bringing peace to the CAR.
Deeply impoverished despite its mineral wealth, CAR has been in the grip of militia violence since 2013. More than two-thirds of the former French colony lies in the hands of armed groups, who typically claim ethnic or religious affiliations and often fight over mineral resources.
Bria is the main town in a diamond-rich region.
Violence erupted there at the weekend between ‘ethnic groups’, the spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in CAR, Vladimir Monteiro said Sunday.
It followed a local split several months ago within a militia called the Popular Front for the Rebirth of the Central African Republic (FPRC), several sources in Bria said.
On one side are members of the Runga ethnic group, including the FPRC’s military chief Abdoulaye Hissene and several of his officers, and local members of the Gula and Kara groups on the other, the sources informed.
“The Gula and Kara alliance has taken over almost all the entire town. There are bodies in all the streets. The town centre is empty. All the Runga have fled,” an aid worker said Tuesday.
Agencies