BANGUI (Reuters) - Heavy arms fire and gunshots
rang out across the capital of the Central African
Republic on Friday as Christian militia forces attacked
Muslim neighbourhoods, sending residents fleeing.
A spokesman for the 3,700-strong African Union
peacekeeping force, MISCA, said the "anti-balaka"
fighters had attacked the PK 5 and Fatima
neighbourhoods, home to the city's minority Muslim
population.
An attack on Bangui by Christian militias in early
December sparked a wave of bloody reprisals by the
Muslim Seleka fighters who seized power in March.
Hundreds of people were killed in the violence,
prompting France to send peacekeeping troops to its
former colony.
Guy-Simplice Kodegue, a spokesman for the interim
government, said the Christian militia forces had tried
to reach the centre of the riverside capital.
All economic and social activity had stopped as
panicked residents fled, he told Reuters.
The deployment of 1,600 French troops to Bangui
helped to restore a semblance of calm in recent days,
but the clashes were a reminder of the tension that
erupted into months of massacres, rapes and looting
following Seleka's seizure of power.
The United Nations estimates more than 200,000
people in Bangui - a quarter of the population - have
been displaced by the fighting. The MISCA spokesman
said a Chadian peacekeeper had died of his wounds
after an attack on a MISCA patrol on Thursday.
On Friday, three Seleka fighters were shot dead in
central Bangui after one pulled out a grenade at a
checkpoint when MISCA soldiers tried to disarm them.
A Congolese MISCA soldier was injured in the firefight,
an officer said.
MISCA says it has disarmed several thousand Seleka
fighters and returned them to barracks. France's
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told TV5 Monde
on Friday that French forces were disarming both
sides, anti-balaka and Seleka, indiscriminately.
FRANCE SEEKS EUROPEAN SUPPORT
Speaking in Brussels, French President Francois
Hollande repeated calls for other European nations to
help restore order in the landlocked African nation of
4.6 million people.
"France is undertaking the most dangerous part of the
mission, but we hope that there will be a European
presence at our side," he said.
Under the terms of a U.N. resolution passed on
December 5, France hopes to hand over responsibility
to security to the MISCA forces in six months. The
African Union force is due to reach 6,000 troops by the
end of January.
"We could even foresee that force going up to 9,000,"
said Hollande, who hosted a summit in Paris this
month to convince African nations to send more
forces.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said on
her Twitter feed Rwanda was preparing to send
troops, after the African Union asked it to participate.
Rwanda has been a strong supporter of a
peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic,
where the religious and ethnic violence has stirred
memories of Rwanda's own 1994 genocide in which
800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed.
The World Food Programme flew in an emergency
shipment of food and supplies to Bangui on Thursday
evening, after temporarily halting flights because of
violence in the capital.
With more than 700,000 people displaced by the
fighting in Central African Republic, WFP has warned
of an impending food crisis. It said on Friday it was
preparing to feed more than a million people there
next year. Source: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9BJ0CC20131220?irpc=932

Fp things admin

In terminators voice "I will be back"

God has left Africa

Admin ,pls fp o!!.if na say na muslim bad tins na ,u go move am there!!