Fleeing Christians celebrate as helicopters arrive at airport

Thousands of Christians have fled to a Central African Republic airport guarded by French soldiers, seeking refuge from mostly Muslim ex-rebels who rule the country.

People sang with joy and banged on plastic buckets and waved rags into the air as several French helicopters landed at the airport in Bangui, a day after bloody clashes in the capital left at least 280 dead.

Outside the barbed wire fences of the airport, bodies lay decomposing along the roads in a capital too dangerous for many to collect the corpses.

The violence has raised fears that waves of retaliatory attacks could soon follow.

“They are slaughtering us like chickens,” said Appolinaire Donoboy, a Christian whose family remained in hiding.

France pledged to increase its presence in its former colony well before Christian militias attacked the capital at dawn.

The arrival of additional French troops and equipment came as Bangui teetered on the brink of total anarchy and represented the greatest hope for many Central Africans.

About 1,000 French forces were expected on the ground last night, a French defence spokesman said.

As night fell, Christians fearing retaliatory attacks by the ex-rebels crowded as close to the runway as possible, laying out their woven mats in front of a barbed wire coiled fence. National radio announced that at least 280 people had died, citing figures from Red Cross officials.

The US State Department said it was “deeply concerned” by the violence and praised France’s quick intervention.

France signalled its amped up presence by sending out armoured vehicles to patrol the streets. A French fighter jet made several flyovers, roaring through the sky over an otherwise lifeless capital as civilians cowered at home.

Britain also flew in a C17 plane yesterday, loaded with equipment to help the French intervention.

As many as 250 French troops are carrying out permanent patrols in Bangui and “we didn’t notice any direct clashes between armed groups today”, said French military spokesman Col Gilles Jaron.

But on Thursday, 10 armed attackers in a pick-up truck fired on a French position at the airport, with weapons including with a rocket-propelled grenade whose charge did not detonate. French forces returned fire, killing four attackers and wounding six.

A planned vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution on Thursday allowed France to proceed with its mission. It coincided with the worst violence to hit the capital since March when the mostly-Muslim rebels known as Seleka overthrew the president of a decade.

On Thursday, Christian militias believed to be loyal to ousted leader Francois Bozize attacked the city, and hours of gun battles followed.

The conflict in one of Africa’s poorest countries has gathered little sustained international attention since the government overthrow in March, and the dramatic developments were overshadowed yesterday by global mourning for South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela.

“Thanks to France and the United Nations who want to save the Central Africans, soon the Seleka attacks on civilians will stop. We have had enough of Seleka killing, raping and stealing,” said Abel Nguerefara, who lives on the outskirts of Bangui.

Streets in the city were empty yesterday except for military vehicles and the trucks favoured by the rebel forces who now claim control of the government.

Nine unclaimed bodies lay sprawled in front of the parliament building alone - local Red Cross workers did not dare retrieve them, or other bodies that were left to decay outside.

Despite the cheers that went up when a jet engine roared overhead, France insisted it was going only reluctantly into Central African Republic and with the limited aim of doubling its presence in the country to 1,200 troops.

It remains an open question how France can achieve even its limited goals in the six months allotted to the mission.

“There’s a big gap between the vision France has of itself as a global power and as a power that can intervene,” said Aline Leboeuf, a security and development specialist at the French Institute for International Relations.

The real question, she said, is: “Can you intervene in the right way and when do you leave?”

Rebel leader-turned-president Michel Djotodia appealed for calm, even as his residence and that of the prime minister were looted and vandalised by the fighters. He announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the hope of preventing retaliatory violence against Christians from Muslims.

In a speech broadcast in the Sango language and a television interview in French, he called on people to realise that French forces were not in Central African Republic to take sides in the increasingly sectarian conflict.

Djotodia, who is Muslim, unified rebel groups in the country’s mostly Muslim north, where resentment of the government and a sense of disenfranchisement has been rife for years.

Yet once those rebels were unleashed upon the capital, he wielded very little control over the mix of bush fighters, child soldiers and foreign mercenaries he had recruited.

Supporters of the ousted president formed self-defence militias such as those behind Thursday’s attack, which came hours before the UN Security Council approved the French deployment.

France’s military, which controls Bangui airport, said about 2,000 Central Africans took refuge there on Thursday, most, if not all, Christian. The crowd swelled yesterday.

Yves Wayina, 26, who fled with his wife and six children, said: “France must come and rapidly deploy and do everything possible to save us.

“We are angry,” he said through the fence keeping civilians away from the airport runway. “The Muslims should go back where they came from.”