Rebels in the Central African Republic inflicted “considerable losses” and took around twenty soldiers prisoner during a raid in the north of the country, the government said Friday.
Rebels from the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC) clashed Tuesday with government forces at Sikikede, in the northern Vakaga region that borders with Chad and Sudan, said Sebastien Wenezoui, special adviser to President Faustin Archange Touadera.
In his statement, Wenezoui questioned the army’s operational chain of command, suggesting that if Zephirin Mamadou, chief of staff of the armed forces was responsible for the defeat, he should be relieved of his duties.
Mamadou denounced the attack as an “act of terrorism” carried out by a “criminal armed group”, in his own statement Friday.
CPC spokesman Mamadou Koura told AFP on Thursday that its forces had been behind the attack.
They said they now controlled the town of Sikikede, something the army disputes and which AFP has been unable to independently verify.
The landlocked CAR is one of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world, despite an abundance of mineral wealth.
It remains scarred by a 2013 civil war, unleashed by a coup against then president Francois Bozize, in which armed groups battled along sectarian lines.
France pulled the last of its troops out of the country in December over the growing presence of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group called in by the president to help quell the rebellion.
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