Nine Chinese nationals were murdered on Sunday in a mine in the Bambari region, in the central part of the Central African Republic, where a civil war has been raging for years, the mayor of the community and a source close to the security forces in the region told AFP.

“We counted nine bodies and two wounded,” said Abel Machipata, the mayor of Bambari. According to him, the victims were Chinese nationals working in a mine of the “Gold Coast Group company”, about 25 kilometers from the community, and were attacked by “gunmen” at around 05:00.

A source close to the security forces of the region confirmed the attack, its account and the nationality of the victims.

When contacted by AFP, the Chinese embassy declined to comment for now.

Authorities have not released further details about the circumstances of the attack, for which there has been no claim of responsibility at this stage.

The bodies of the victims were transferred at the end of the day yesterday to the Amitie hospital in Bangui, where the Chinese ambassador, Li Qinfeng, and the foreign minister, Sylvie Baipo Temon, went, an AFP reporter found.

In an announcement yesterday Sunday, the Coalition of Patriots for Change (Coalition des patriotes pour le changement, CPC), an alliance of rebel organizations that was formed in 2020 and aims to overthrow President Fostan Arkanz Tuandera, denied that it had any involvement in the attack, it complained this “heinous and barbaric” act and accused “Wagner’s Russian mercenaries” of having committed it.

The Central African Republic — the second least developed country on the planet, according to the UN — has been transformed since 2013 into a theater of civil war, extremely deadly in the first years, the intensity of which has, however, decreased since 2018.

In late 2020, the strongest of the various armed groups that then shared two-thirds of the territory launched an attack on Bangui shortly before elections were to be held, and Mr Tuadera called on Moscow to rescue his army, which was facing huge shortages.

Hundreds of Russian paramilitaries then arrived to reinforce a few hundred already in the country as of 2018. They were able, in a few months, to repel the rebel offensive, then retake territory and cities they held. But without managing to restore the authority of the Central African Republic state throughout the country and permanently.