The U.N. refugee agency says Christian militias in the Central African Republic are attacking people trying to flee the country, forcing them to take more dangerous routes across the border.
UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said on Friday that the agency had registered four wounded refugees in Cameroon in recent days, three of them hacked with machetes and one who had been shot.
People arriving in Cameroon told UNHCR that militias have blocked the main roads across the border, forcing them to travel through the bush, sometimes for up to three months.
According to agency numbers from March, more than 300,000 people have fled the Central African Republic, which descended into sectarian violence following a coup last year.
On Thursday, the U.N. Security Council approved nearly 12,000 peacekeepers, but they won’t arrive until September.
