As Central African Republic Convulses, Security Council Votes to Strengthen Force There

Source: NY TIMES

DAKAR, Senegal — Fighting tore through parts of the capital of the Central African Republic on Thursday, hours before the United Nations Security Council voted to strengthen the international force that has been unable to quell the chaos there.

Officials and citizens said some strategic locations in the city — a military camp, the neighborhood around the airport and an opposition district — appeared to have come under sustained assault from forces opposed to the rebel coalition that seized power in the country earlier this year.

An official with Doctors Without Borders, the medical relief organization, said that at least 50 people had been killed in the fighting, with 100 others wounded.

The shooting began in the early hours Thursday, citizens said, but by midmorning the attackers appeared to have been pushed back from the neighborhood of the National Assembly, at the edge of an area fiercely opposed to the ruling rebel coalition. The streets of Bangui were deserted, and the situation remained confused, with officials of the rebel government saying that their forces had regained control, and others saying that the antigovernment fighters appeared to have penetrated the capital’s outlying neighborhoods.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/world/africa/central-african-republic-fighting.html?hp