C Africa clashes leave three dead

BANGUI, Central African Republic: At least three troops were killed in fighting with militiamen in the southern Central African Republic (CAR), in the latest test of an 11-month-old truce, the government said on Monday.

“Around 20 houses and several shops” were also torched in the fighting in the town of Alindao, spokesman Ange Maxime Kazagui said. Vladimir Monteiro, spokesman for the UN forces in the CAR, also said 10 people were injured.

The clashes erupted on Friday between government forces and the Union for Peace in the CAR (UPC), Monteiro told AFP. Two camps for displaced people caught fire, prompting around 125 people to seek shelter around a UN base, he said.

The fighting erupted after UPC men “stopped a soldier in town,” Alindao’s deputy prefect, Victor de Pascal Ouiabona Yankombona, told AFP. “Each side sent people to pick up their casualties, and both sides believed that they were reinforcements, which led to an escalation of violence.”

This version of events was confirmed by senior members of the UPC, reached by telephone. The CAR, one of the world’s poorest countries has been grappling with violence since 2013.

Its president, Faustin-Archange Touadera, governs with the support of MINUSCA, a 14,700-person UN peacekeeping force. But most of the country lies in the hands of armed groups, who often fight over the country’s mineral resources.

There have been repeated peace agreements between the government and armed groups. The most recent, signed on February 6 last year, has dialled down the scale of the violence but not ended it.