UN investigators in the Central African Republic have found a litany of gross human rights violations including killings committed by both sides in the conflict.
"The widespread lawlessness and gross human rights violations highlighted in these preliminary findings confirm the need for urgent action and accountability," Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The situation remains extremely volatile and dangerous," she warned.
Pillay is to present the investigators' findings at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the Central African Republic next Monday.
Her spokesman Rupert Coville said the four-member team deployed in the impoverished country from December 12-24 found a "cycle of widespread human rights violations and reprisals".
"These include extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, mutilations, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment, rape and the deliberate targeting of civilians based on their religion," Colville told reporters.
The majority Christian country has descended into chaos and sectarian unrest since a March 2013 coup by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels.
After a fresh wave of violence began in December, French troops deployed in a bid to bolster an undermanned African peacekeeping force.
They have struggled to stem a crisis which has now uprooted some 900,000 people and left cash-strapped aid agencies struggling to help 2.6 million Central Africans, with hunger on the increase.
The UN investigators documented a string of community killings in December, as so-called "anti-balaka" Christian militias turned on former Seleka fighters.
"During the clashes, anti-balaka forces killed members of the ex-Seleka forces but also deliberately targeted Muslim civilians, including women and children," said Colville.
During the reprisals that followed ex-Seleka members detained and were believed to have executed male civilians in a camp, and also hunted them down in hospitals.
Muslim civilians also took part in killings, while ex-Seleka fighters masqueraded as Chadian peacekeepers from the African FOMAC force, searching house-to-house for anti-balaka members, killing civilians in the process.
