Johannesburg – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged authorities in the Central African Republic (CAR) to investigate repeated attacks, two of which killed a second UN peacekeepers in the spate of a week.
“This brings to five, the number of peacekeepers killed in targeted attacks in the CAR since January 2018, with two attacks occurring in the span of a week,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Monday in a statement issued on behalf of Guterres.
The latest attack by armed insurgents on the UN peacekeeping mission in CAR, known by its French acronym MINUSCA, resulted in the killing of a peacekeeper from Burundi and the wounding of another while they were on patrol in Bambari, in the centre of the country.
On June 3, an attack by armed insurgents killed a UN peacekeeper from Tanzania and injured seven others while they were patrolling in the country’s west.
Dujarric warned that attacks against UN peacekeepers may constitute a war crime and that sanctions could be applied against perpetrators brought to justice.