About 600 French troops dispatched to CAR, with Paris stressing importance of clamping down on religious reprisals

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

After outbreaks of violence and killings in the Central African Republic, French forces patrolling the capital, Bangui, said calm had been restored on Friday morning.

Around 600 French troops have been dispatched to the CAR to boost African Union forces already in situ. A further 400 are expected to arrive on Friday evening and a further 200 over the weekend.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defence minister, confirmed that a detachment of helicopters had been deployed from Gabon.

"French forces have been carrying out patrols in Bangui and it was calm overnight," Le Drian told journalists in Paris.

He said that to secure the city, peacekeeping troops had to "disarm and confine" those responsible for the violence. He said the armed groups were "hard to identify" and that various groups emerged from "moment to moment".

"People are mixed up with this or that group and we don't know their origin," he said, adding that the motivations for the violence were "sometimes political" but appeared mostly to be "gratuitous violence".

He also said it was important to clamp down on the religious reprisals that had broken out in the past few days.

Later, a spokesman for the French defence ministry said Operation Sangaris – named after an exotic red butterfly – was aimed at supporting African forces to make the CAR secure and stemming the violence to allow humanitarian teams to get in and work safely.

He admitted Paris had been forced to bring forward its deployment after a sudden outbreak of killings and extreme violence, much of it against women and children, earlier this week.

"We had been planning to be ready this weekend, but we had to bring forward our actions," he said.

"We are also securing a number of hotspots and are there to protect French and European citizens."

An estimated 300 French nationals are believed to have remained in the CAR.