The UN has around 12,500 personnel deployed in Central Africa as part of its MINUSCA mission
The UN must conduct a "thorough investigation" into its peacekeepers' actions in Central African Republic during a militia attack in which "up to 100 civilians were shot and burnt alive", Amnesty International said Friday.
In a new report, the London-based watchdog said troops in the UN's MINUSCA mission had retreated to their base rather than engage with a militia group which attacked civilians at a displacement camp at the Catholic mission in the central town of Alindao in mid-November.
According to an internal UN report, at least 60 people were killed when violence flared between the Union for Peace in CAR (UPC) Muslim militia and anti-Balaka militiamen.
But other sources told AFP the toll was higher, with national assembly president Laurent Ngon Baba saying "at least 100" people died.
"Scores of civilians at the displaced persons camp in Alindao were massacred after the UN peacekeepers charged with protecting them failed to take action to fend off their armed attackers," said Joanne Mariner, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser.
The camp is home to more than 18,000 people.
Amnesty researchers spoke to 20 survivors, "many of whom described how Mauritanian MINUSCA peacekeepers stationed at the site failed to respond to the attack. Rather than defend against the attackers, or even fire warning shots, the Mauritanian troops retreated to their main base at the site," the report said.
"By the time the attackers finished plundering and burning the site toward the end of the day, at least 70 civilians had been killed -- with some sources estimating a total of nearly 100 dead."
The militias "fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at the site, and then looted and burned the majority of the displaced persons' dwellings," the report found, noting that the victims included many women, children, older people, and people with disabilities, along with two Catholic priests.
- Badly outnumbered -
Although the UN troops were "badly outnumbered by armed attackers", their failure to act raised "serious questions as to whether they lived up to their mandate to protect civilians," it said, urging a prompt investigation.
"An immediate and impartial inquiry must focus, in particular, on whether MINUSCA failed in its duty to protect the lives of more than 18,000 people residing at the site," Mariner said.
During the violence, a local church and a convent were also torched as well as the camp itself, with AFP shown pictures of charred bodies at the site.
A week after the massacre, the UN admitted its troops "inability to prevent violence of this nature" at Alindao, where barely 40 peacekeepers are stationed in a town of some 30,000 people.
Alindao has long been the base of UPC militia, one of the main groups in the former Seleka coalition which overthrew the regime of Francois Bozize, a Christian, in 2013.
The report was issued just hours after the UN Security Council renewed its peacekeeping mission to CAR after tough talks between the United States, France and Russia.
The mandate allows the mission, which comprises 11,650 military personnel and 2,080 police, to be extended until November 15, 2019.
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