A CHILD WAS found alive among dead bodies following a massacre in a village in the stricken Central African Republic today.

Amnesty International reports that the 11-year-old Muslim girl was discovered hiding alone in a village west of Bangui, surrounded by bodies and without any food or water following a massacre four days ago.

Brutal killing

The girl is described as “traumatised” and had been in hiding since the brutal killing of her parents and neighbours, said Amnesty.

It also said that dogs were feeding on some of the corpses of the more than 20 villagers who had been left lying on the streets.

The girl was found by Amnesty International’s team in the village of Bouguere, west of Bangui and has been taken to a secure location.

Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International explained more:

The girl was crouching in a corner in an abandoned, ransacked house. She was terrified and could barely speak. She had been hiding there since the massacre, four days before. She had not drunk or eaten anything and was too weak to even stand up. She was the only Muslim survivor in the village. The others had either fled or been killed.

Amnesty International said that the horrific scene its team found “is illustrative of the horrors tens of thousands of Muslims are experiencing across the Central African Republic”.

Donatella Rovera said they saw bodies “littering the streets”, and that some had been partly burned.

One body was that of a baby who was around seven to eight months old. The houses of the Muslim families had been looted.

“If the international community is truly committed to stop any more massacres from taking place, it must ensure that peacekeeping forces are present where they are needed most,” said Rovera.

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