Central African president vows war against ‘anti-balaka’ militia

The new president of the Central African Republic vowed war on Wednesday against a mostly Christian militia accused of ethnic cleansing, on the same day as the UN launched a major foodlift operation.

"We are going to go to war against the anti-balaka," Catherine Samba Panza, said in the town of Mbaiki, south of the capital Bangui.

"They think that because I'm a woman, I'm weak. But now the anti-balaka who want to kill, will themselves be hunted," she said.

She was referring to the mostly Christian anti-balaka ("anti-machete") militia that emerged last year after a mostly Muslim rebel group seized control of the country.

Amnesty International this week reported that anti-balaka violence had triggered "a Muslim exodus of historic proportions."

Mass graves discovered in Bangui

Also, African Union peacekeepers on Wednesday uncovered a mass grave at a military camp in Bangui occupied by the Muslim Seleka rebels, as a top UN official warned Central African Republic was succumbing to "ethnic-religious cleansing."

A Reuters witness saw four separate shallow graves containing at least a dozen bodies at the military camp in the 200 Villas neighborhood of central Bangui, where some Seleka fighters are still stationed.

Pastor Antoine Mboa Bogo, head of the local Red Cross, confirmed there was a mass grave at the camp but said his staff had not yet had time to determine the number of dead.

"We need to send in a team with the proper equipment tomorrow to examine it," he said.

On a visit to Bangui, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres called for a massive deployment of international peacekeepers to restore stability in a country gripped by violence since March, when Seleka seized power.

Months of looting, rape and murder followed, bringing international pressure that saw Seleka leader Michel Djotodia resign in January. Since then, Christian militia have carried out systematic attacks on Muslims, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee the country.

"We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe in Central African Republic," Guterres told reporters. "There is an ethnic-religious cleansing taking place."

'Exceptional operation'

The UN food agency on Wednesday launched one of its largest-ever emergency food airlifts, flying in supplies to the Central African Republic.

The World Food Programme said it would fly a month's supply of food from Douala in Cameroon to the Central African capital of Bangui which would be enough for 150,000 people.

"This is a rather exceptional operation, our biggest emergency air operation in a long time, bigger that for Syria and the Philippines," WFP spokesman Alexis Masciarelli told AFP.

But he added that the operation "would not definitively solve the problem."

According to the United Nations, 1.3 million people, nearly a quarter of the population of the CAR, need immediate food aid, particularly in the camps of displaced people numbering more than 800,000 who have sought refuge there from the sectarian violence that has erupted in the country.