Thousands of people have fled to the Central African Republic's (CAR) main international airport to escape marauding gunmen, blocking the runway and preventing flights from landing on Thursday morning.

More than 5,000 civilians, many of them women and children, occupied the tarmac for about 18 hours and protested by throwing stones at peacekeepers before they were dispersed with water cannons and teargas.

The incident underlined the deepening security crisis in the CAR that has prompted the UN to predict that it is in danger of becoming a failed state and President Hollande of France to warn that it is on the verge of "Somalisation".

The chaos began in March when the rebel group Seleka marched into the capital, Bangui, deposing the president, François Bozizé, and unleashing violence, which the new leader, Michel Djotodia, has done little to curb.

Residents of the Boeing quarter‚ seen as a Bozizé stronghold‚ next to Bangui M'poko airport began to flee their homes on Tuesday night after Seleka fighters started shooting. Their occupation of the airport prevented several flights, including one run by Morocco's national carrier, Royal Air Maroc, from landing. The flights were rerouted to Douala in Cameroon.

An senior officer with the Central African regional peacekeeping mission based at the airport said the civilians had refused to leave the tarmac. "They came here because they are afraid," he told Reuters. Peacekeepers had been forced to intervene to stop Seleka fighters from entering.

Boeing residents said that what had started as an evacuation had become a protest they were protesting against lawlessness. "Our presence here at the airport has one goal: to get the world's attention. Because we are fed up with these Seleka," one resident, Antoine Gazama, told Reuters.

Seleka, a grouping of five rebel movements led by Djotodia, has raided local villages and Bangui neighbourhoods under the pretext of searching for weapons caches and pro-Bozizé militias.

Over the past 10 days arbitrary arrests, detention, torture, armed robberies, lootings and attacks on civilians have displaced thousands of people, according to the UN's refugee agency. Ten deaths have been reported. On Tuesday François Hollande urged the UN security council and the African Union to intervene, warning that the CAR was at risk of following Somalia, which suffered two decades of civil war and anarchy. "It's more than time to take action on the Central African Republic," he told an annual meeting of French ambassadors in Paris. "This country is on the verge of Somalisation," he said.