Article content continued

Ouandja Magloire, who goes by “Mad Dog,” said he was “angry” over the deaths of his wife, sister-in-law and her baby.

The reports have echoes of the grisly stories about the country’s late dictator, Jean Bedel Bokassa, who was alleged to have practised cannibalism during his rule between 1966 and 1979.

Charges of cannibalism against him were later dropped, despite widespread rumours that he had kept human limbs in fridges and even served parts of them to visiting French dignitaries. AFP reports were corroborated by an aid worker who spoke to The Sunday Telegraph, saying: “They were taking machetes to people and burning the bodies and eating them.”

The violence was said to have been carried out in retaliation for rampages carried out by Mr. Djotodia’s Seleka militias, which helped him to seize power in the CAR last March.

The first Muslim leader to wield power over the country’s Christian majority, his rule triggered 10 months of instability that has led to a fifth of the population being displaced, and to France ordering peacekeepers into the former colony in late November.

Paris acted after warnings from the United Nations of all-out civil war in the land-locked country, the sixth poorest in the world despite vast mineral wealth. According to Pastor Antoine Mbaobogo, a resident of Bangui, at least three people died overnight on Friday, including a Christian vigilante. Sporadic gunfire was heard throughout the city as crowds of looters broke down the doors of shops in Muslim neighbourhoods. “Those who were looted when the [mainly Muslim] Seleka [rebels] arrived [in March last year] are now looting in turn,” Mr. Baobogo said.