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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Deadly clashes erupt in C.Africa as French minister visits |
| 2014-07-08 |
| [Al Ahram] La Belle France's defence minister warned Monday that violence in the Central African Republic was becoming "more serious" as he started a visit to the former French colony, amid reports of more deadly festivities. Jean-Yves Le Drian said political efforts to end the bloody conflict have stalled despite the election of a new leader six months ago, and the deadlock has further inflamed tensions between Christians and Mohammedans. "The settlement to all this can only be political, yet politics have broken down," he told AFP before arriving in the capital Bangui on Monday. Central Africa's transitional president Catherine Samba Panza took power in February in a bid to end the deadly sectarian violence, which erupted when the mainly Mohammedan Seleka ...a 'mainly' Moslem rebel force in the Central African Republic that overthrew the govt, imposed a regime of rapine and looting on the country's non-Moslem population, and was then tossed by France. They still exist, getting funding and weapons from somewhere or other, licking their wounds, complaining about the oppression of Moslems, and occasionally raping and looting someone... alliance seized power in a March 2013 coup. Brutal attacks by rogue former Seleka splinter groups prompted the mostly Christian majority to form "anti-balaka" ("anti-machete") vigilante militias, unleashing a wave of tit-for-tat killings. Several people died in sectarian festivities between the rival groups in the central town of Dekoa on Sunday, a policeman told AFP on condition of anonymity. In the north, at least three people were killed by gunnies who rode into the village of Kouki on cycle of violences and shot at residents, said a source in peacekeeping forces. Some 34 Mohammedans were also injured, four of them critically, by a grenade attack on a mosque during Ramadan prayers in a village near the Chad border, the MISCA source added. |
| Posted by:Fred |