The father of a slain French soldier has described how disarmed Muslim fighters in the Central African Republic were lynched by a Christian mob in a harrowing testimony that has raised the spectre of a new wave of sectarian killing.
President Francois Hollande has said France's intervention in CAR was "essential in the face of abuses and massacres", vowing the mission would continue until African forces could take over.
"To not intervene would be to stand idly by and count the dead," Hollande said
However, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian admitted the mission represented a much more difficult task than France's military intervention against Islamist rebels in Mali earlier this year.
And those remarks were borne out by Philippe Vokaer's account of his final contact with his 23-year-old son Nicolas, one of two French paratroopers killed in a firefight while on a night patrol in the capital Bangui on Monday.
"We had a text exchange the same evening," Vokaer senior told French daily Le Parisien.
"He had witnessed some atrocious scenes. As soon as the French soldiers disarmed the Muslim militia, they saw them being lynched by a Christian mob in the middle of the street. There was nothing the army could do to stop it."
In Bangui, a humanitarian aid worker who did not want to be identified, told AFP he feared mass reprisals against members of the country's Muslim minority, who are associated with the Seleka coalition behind the March coup which plunged the CAR into anarchic terror.
"What we are faced with now is the spectre of a vicious spiral of reprisals with the village self-defence militias organising 'return matches' against Seleka and the Seleka themselves going on a killing spree as they retreat to their strongholds in the north," he said.
