Iran to send humanitarian aid to CAR

Rasa - Iran is going to send humanitarian aid to thousands of displaced people in the crisis-hit Central African Republic (CAR), the Foreign Ministry has said.

News ID: 640

Date: 25 February 2014 - 16:09

Rasa News Agency reports - The announcement was made by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in an exclusive interview with IRNA.

The CAR has been facing a deadly crisis since December last year, when Christian militia launched coordinated attacks against the mostly Muslim members of the Seleka group.

The Christian militiamen have been raging violence against the Muslims, many of whom have escaped the country to avoid being killed by the militia.

The fierce fighting in the African country reportedly claimed over 1,000 lives and forced about one million people to flee their homes last month.

Amir-Abdollahian said that what is happening in the war-torn CAR is part of a scenario to spread Islamophobia and is the result of foreign meddling in the internal affairs of the African country.

“The killing of the innocent Muslims of CAR is the result of fueling religious prejudices among the people who have lived together peacefully for decades,” he said.

Tehran condemns both Christian extremism and Islamic extremism in the CAR, he said.

Stating that the current situation in the CAR has provided the ground for a potential campaign of ethnic cleansing, Amir-Abdollahian called for collective efforts to prevent the repetition of the genocide in Rwanda.

In the Rwanda genocide, 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed by the rebels of the so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in 1994.