France increases troops in African nation

BANGUI, Central African Republic - France unexpectedly raised its troop deployment in Central African Republic by hundreds of soldiers Saturday, as Christians fearing reprisal attacks sought refuge from Muslim former rebels who control the country in wake of massacres in the capital.

At a conference on African security in Paris, French President Francois Hollande said his nation - armed with a muscular new U.N. mandate - was raising its deployment to 1,600 on Saturday, 400 more than initially planned. French troops were patrolling the capital, Bangui, and fanning out into the back country.

Later, after a meeting of regional nations about Central African Republic, his office said African Union nations agreed to increase their totaldeployment to 6,000 - up from about 2,500 now and nearly double the projected rollout of 3,600 by year-end.

Former colonizer France has dispatched forces to help stabilize a crisis that its foreign minister has said now verges on genocide. The local Red Cross said it has gathered more than 280 bodies in recent days, although the perilous security had made it impossible to access some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods.

Bloodshed was rife Thursday, hours before a U.N. vote paved the way for a greater French and African presence to be deployed.

On Saturday, some Bangui residents ventured outside for the first in time in days only to bury their dead. French armored personnel carriers and troops from the regional African peacekeeping mission roared at high speed down Bangui’s roads, as familiescarrying palm fronds pushed coffins in carts on the roads’ shoulders. Others walking on the streets carried bows and arrows or machetes.

In a decree read on national radio by a spokesman, President Michel Djotodia ordered the national army - which now includes ex-Seleka rebels blamed for human-rights abuses - to remain off the streets being patrolled by French and regional forces. Spokesman Guy Simplice Kodegue said those who violated the order would be punished.

Aid workers returned to the streets to collect bloated bodies that had laid uncollected in the heat since Thursday, when Christian fighters known as the anti-balaka, who oppose the country’s ruler, descended on the capital in a coordinated attack on several mostly Muslim neighborhoods.

Residents of Christian neighborhoods said ex-Seleka rebels later carried out reprisal attacks, going houseto-house in search of alleged combatants and firing at civilians who strayed into the wrong part of town.

Zumbeti Thierry Tresor, 23, was among those slain after he tried to cross through another Bangui neighborhood to visit family members. Seleka fighters shot him in the neck and stomach, his friends said. On Saturday, neighbors hiked the rocky path to his one-room home where his covered body lay on the floor.

Outside the front door, his wife wailed, gripping their 3-year-old daughter in her lap as neighbors crowded around her. Alongside their house, a team of a dozen men with sticks and shovels dug Tresor’s grave.

“We want the French army to come and protect us,” saidTresor’s friend, Francois Yayi. “We have no police to call. The Seleka will kill us all.”

As families mourned their dead, others fled by the thousands to the few known safe places in the capital - the airport guarded by French troops and the grounds of a Catholic center run by the Salesians of Don Bosco. Some 3,000 people had fled to the complex Thursday when the fighting began, and that number swelled to 12,000 by Saturday.

Most of the displaced in Central African Republic’s capital are Christian since the ex-Seleka rebels have not targeted Muslim neighborhoods. However, anger over the Seleka attacks has prompted vicious reprisals on Muslim civilians in other parts of the country.

Information for this article was contributed by Sylvie Corbet and staff writers of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 12/08/2013

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