A U.N. human rights team says testimony gathered showed that Chadian citizens, including peacekeepers, carried out mass killings during chaotic violence in Central African Republic.
The U.N. human rights office, on Tuesday, said that the team also found that the disarming of some Muslim fighters by French peacekeepers had the unintended side-effect of enabling their Christian enemies to kill them and their families in retaliatory attacks.
U.N. human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, said the evidence showed that intercommunal hatred had risen to “extraordinarily vicious levels”.
Neighbouring Chad has denied helping the Muslim fighters.
A Muslim rebel coalition, Séléka, seized power in Central African Republic last March, unleashing a wave of killings and looting that in turn sparked revenge attacks by the “anti-balaka” Christian militia.
The Séléka leader-turned-president Michel Djotodia resigned last Friday under intense international pressure, but sporadic violence has continued, despite the presence of 1,600 French troops and 4,000 African Union peacekeepers.
The crisis has sent food prices soaring, leaving many households down to one meal a day and 2.6 million people in need of U.N. humanitarian assistance, the U.N. World Food Programme said in a separate report on Tuesday.
The four-person U.N. human rights mission carried out 183 interviews between December 12 and December 24, mainly collecting testimony on a wave of violence since December 5, including summary executions, sexual violence, torture, disappearances, looting and burning of churches and mosques.
“Numerous interviewees identified the ex-Séléka perpetrators as being Chadian nationals,” their report said.
“Witnesses consistently reported that ex-Séléka wearing the armbands of Chadian FOMAC (peacekeepers) went from house to house searching for anti-Balaka, and shot and killed civilians, including children, women, elderly and disabled civilians.”
The team also heard multiple accounts of collusion between FOMAC and ex-Séléka forces.
The team’s report is the first batch of evidence collected by the United Nations, which is setting up a formal Commission of Inquiry to collect and investigate human rights abuses, and is a first step towards potential prosecutions.
