The International Committee of the Red Cross said that 19 Central African soldiers who had been taken captive on February 14 by a coalition of rebel groups in the country’s north had been freed on Tuesday (ICRC).
According to Yves Van Loo, deputy head of the ICRC delegation in the Central African Republic, 19 of the 20 soldiers who had been held captive for more than two months had been freed and “will arrive in Birao (North) around 5 p.m. (local) and they will stay there until we organise their return to Bangui.”
After “intense combat” between soldiers and rebels in Sikikede, a village in the Vakaga region in the north of the country, at the junction of the Chadian and Sudanese borders, they had been taken captive by members of the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC).
The administration provided a vague assessment, stating that these clashes had resulted in “significant” military losses. According to Mr. Van Loo, the soldiers “seem to be in good shape and able to survive the trip.”
Release operations
The CPC confirmed the information in a statement, citing a “voluntary and unilateral decision to release the 20 soldiers taken prisoner” more than two months ago. Among them, 19 were actually released. “The twentieth is an injured person who had been separated from the group for medical treatment. We will recover him at another location later ,” Van Loo told AFP.
The liberation operations took place in an area whose access is made difficult by fighting between rebels, soldiers, and their mercenary allies from the Russian paramilitary group Wagner .
“Since their hostage, their release was our greatest concern (…) We wanted to see them free,” Augustin Ndando Kpako , spokesman for the General Staff of the Armed Forces, told AFP . “We intervened from the start as a neutral player in order to negotiate with all the parties concerned” , explained Mr. Van Loo.
The CPC’s press release confirms that it has “opened negotiations” with “the International Committee of the Red Cross and MINUSCA”, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic.
But she accuses the government and the Central African president, Faustin Archange Touadéra , of having refused “to assume his role as a military leader by getting personally involved in the release” of these men.
Civil war
“The deafening silence of President Touadéra” and “of his Minister of Defense show the lack of interest if not the total contempt they have for the military” , accused of fighting “to save the President’s chair” , can we still read.
Asked about these accusations in particular, the authorities did not respond immediately. After the February 14 attack, the army chief of staff, Zephirin Mamadou, denounced an “act of terrorism” perpetrated by a “criminal armed group” .
CPC spokesman Mamadou Koura told AFP that he was behind the attack. He then assured that the rebels controlled the town of Sikikede , which the army disputed, and that AFP could not verify from independent sources.
The Central African Republic is the second least developed country in the world according to the UN, and has been the scene of a deadly civil war since 2013 in its first years but which has decreased in intensity since 2018.
At the end of 2020, the most powerful of the many armed groups which then shared two-thirds of the territory had joined forces within the CPC and had launched an offensive on Bangui shortly before the presidential and legislative elections to try to overthrow the head of the country. State Faustin Archange Touadéra, who had called on Moscow to rescue his destitute army.
