Last week, a man was lynched at a public rally in Bangui, Central African Republic — just moments after President Catherine Samba-Panza left the stage where she outlined plans for the national army to take over security from the international peacekeepers. Alleging the man was a rebel, the crowd stabbed him, kicked him to the ground and pelted him with stones. A police officer who tried to intervene was accused of being a traitor.

This scene has grown common in the war-ravaged nation, in which civilians are being targeted in what Amnesty International has qualified as ethnic cleansing.

“Invariably, it is civilians who have borne the brunt of the spiralling inter-communal violence,” reads a newly-released report from Amnesty International, “Ethnic Cleansing and Sectarian Killings in the Central African Republic.”

“At least 200 Muslims have been killed and hundreds more injured in the anti-balaka attacks documented by Amnesty International, and large numbers of Christians were killed in reprisal attacks. In addition to causing death and destruction, attacks against Muslims have been committed with the stated intent to forcibly displace these communities from the country,” the report stated.

The beginnings of a blood feud

Hostilities in the Central African Republic were triggered when the Séléka started to seize towns and villages. Séléka, a coalition of mostly Muslim rebel groups that are angry that the administration of former President François Bozizé has failed to meet all of the terms of the peace agreement for the 2004 to 2007 Central African Republic Bush War. On Dec.10, 2012, the rebels seized N’Délé, Sam Ouandja and Ouadda. They took Bamingui five days later.

Despite a call for international help and the intervention of neighboring central African nations, Séléka managed to overturn the government on March 24, 2013, and force Bozizé into exile. With Séléka leader Michel Djotodia declaring himself the new president, the mostly Christian found itself governed by a Muslim president.

Despite control of the government, Séléka gunmen continued their attacks on civilians, targeting and killing at least 40 — according to Human Rights Watch — and intentionally damaging 34 villages or towns. The U.N. Security Council recognized the Central African Republic under Séléka rule represented “a serious threat” to regional stability and that there has been “a total breakdown in law and order.” U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos estimated that more than 200,000 people have been driven from their homes and that a third of the nation’s 4.6 million population were in need of assistance with securing food, shelter, health care or water.

“When they entered the village, they started chasing at us [and] shot at people inside their homes or running outside toward the bush,” said a Gbade witness to Human Rights Watch. “Most of the villagers were shot in the back while running.”

The International Organization for Migration places the displacement in the Central African Republic at 838,000, with a further 245,000 Central Africans having fled the region. According to an U.N. assessment, roughly 90 percent of the Central African Republic’s inhabitants only eat once a day, with 96 percent of the nation’s farmers having no access to seeds.

With Djotodia no longer able to maintain control of the Séléka coalition, he called on its disbandment in September 2013. However, with Séléka forces acting without centralized direction, the rash of murders, rapes and lootings against civilians attributed to the Séléka mounted.

Even after Djotodia’s abdication and exile and Séléka leaving the Central African Republic due to increased international pressures and the introduction of French peacekeepers — which curtailed the Séléka forces — the conflict there has became a massive tit-for-tat scenario. Christian militia groups are attacking Muslim civilians in retaliation for the Séléka atrocities, and Muslim militia groups are attacking the Christian civilians in response to the attacks on Muslim civilians.

The cost of revenge

In recent weeks, Christian anti-bakala militia groups have demanded that the Muslim civilians “go back where they came from,” and have burned mosques, driven thousands from their homes and have killed and mutilated many. The Bangui public rally lynching followed a clash in Boda, where at least 75 were killed and more than 30 houses were set afire.

The ethnic conflict has caused more than 1,000 deaths and has led to at least one reported case of cannibalism.

“Muslim! Muslim! Muslim. I stabbed him in the head. I poured petrol on him. I burned him. Then I ate his leg, the whole thing right down to the bone – with bread. That’s why people call me Mad-dog,” said Ouandja Magloire, the self-confessed cannibal, to the BBC.

Magloire, a Christian mobster, stated that he ate his victim’s flesh in retaliation for the murder of his pregnant wife and sister-in-law.

Stopping genocide

Many feel that the situation in the Central African Republic, which has fallen along ethnic and religious lines, has the possibility of degrading into genocide, similar to conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia. Despite the presence of 5,500 African Union International Support Mission to Central Africa forces and 1,600 French peacekeepers, sectarian violence in the nation continues to rise. The European Union pledged 1,000 peacekeepers, but they have yet to show up.

United Nation’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the response from the international community fails to prevent human rights atrocity, protect civilians or restore order. Ban has stated that the international community’s response “does not yet match the gravity of the situation” and that sectarian violence is risking the nation being torn into parts.

“While the scale of the violence in the Central African Republic over the past year is unprecedented, the country has been in a human rights crisis for years. If it is to escape the violent quagmire into which it has sunk, both the international community and the national government will need to act immediately,” said Amnesty International.

“The main challenge in rebuilding the security forces, including the army and police, will be to ensure that they disband the many armed militias operating in the country — rather than working with such groups or adopting their practices.”

A war crimes prosecutor from the International Criminal Court has recently opened an investigation probing potential crimes against humanity in regards to reports of “extreme brutality to various groups.”