Roadside bomb kills 3 UN peacekeepers in Central African Republic

A roadside bomb killed three United Nations peacekeepers from Bangladesh and injured several others in the northwestern Central African Republic, the UN has said.

The attack occurred on Monday near the village of Kaita, close to the border with Cameroon, in an area rife with militia activity, the peacekeeping mission MINUSCA said late on Tuesday.

“The battalion was carrying out a patrol… when 1 of its vehicles hit an explosive device,” MINUSCA said in a tweet.

No militia was directly blamed for the attack, although MINUSCA head Valentine Rugwabiza condemned “the use of explosive devices by armed groups”.

MINUSCA, officially known as the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic, said it has launched an investigation into the explosion.

Since 2013, CAR has been rocked by violence when mainly Muslim Seleka rebels overthrew then-President Francois Bozize, prompting reprisals from mostly Christian militias.

The conflict has uprooted more than one million people, according to the UN.

Violence waned after a shaky peace accord was signed in February 2019 between the government and 14 armed groups, but the situation remains volatile as swaths of territory are still outside government control in what is one of the world’s poorest countries.

UN peacekeepers were deployed to CAR in 2014. The mission currently counts just over 14,200 uniformed personnel and has suffered 147 fatalities, its website says.