The United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (UNMISCA) received on Tuesday the reinforcement of 300 Rwandan peacekeepers to secure the vital supply route linking the capital Bangui to Cameroon, it said in a tweet.
The deployment of troops comes as part of a UN Security Council resolution on March 12 to gradually increase the number of UN peacekeepers by about 3,000.
Ranked the second least developed country in the world by the UN, the Central African Republic has been ravaged by a civil war since 2013, which has, however, significantly decreased in intensity since 2018. The Central African Republic experienced renewed violence in mid-December when a coalition of six of the most powerful armed groups that controlled two-thirds of the Central African Republic launched an offensive against the regime of President Faustin Archange Touadéra.
They came up against much better armed and equipped forces: some 12,000 peacekeepers from the Minusca peacekeeping force, present since 2014, but also hundreds of Rwandan soldiers and Russian paramilitaries dispatched at the end of December by their countries to the rescue of Mr. Touadéra and a destitute army.
However, rebel attacks remain frequent and have increased in recent weeks. On Saturday, at least six civilians were killed in the northwest of the country, near the border with Cameroon.