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A humanitarian convoy reached Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, on Monday after a 50-day blockade by rebels who cut the city’s lifeline, the UN said.
“Fourteen trucks, nine of them from the UN World Food Program” have arrived, said Lt. Col. Abdoulaziz Fall, spokesperson for the MINUSCA peacekeeping mission.
Armed groups launched an offensive on the capital on December 19, cutting off a key highway that left more than 1,500 trucks stranded at the border with neighboring Cameroon.
One of the poorest countries in the world, CAR has been locked in violence since 2013, when its then president, François Bozize, was toppled.
The resulting war divided the country largely along religious and ethnic lines, causing thousands of deaths and causing around a quarter of the population to flee their homes.
The militias that emerged during the conflict now control around two-thirds of the country, and President Faustin Archange Touadera is heavily dependent on UN forces, as well as military personnel sent by Russia and Rwanda.
Anti-Touadera groups have come together in an alliance ahead of the presidential and legislative elections on December 27.
Their advance on Bangui was halted but they retained a bottleneck on the main Bangui highway, preventing trucks from bringing in food and other supplies.
The route is essential for almost all of CAR’s imports, and the price of some commodities has risen by at least 50 percent in some places.
“The first trucks from Cameroon have arrived in Bangui under MINUSCA escort,” said Fall, who speaks of MINUSCA military operations.
In addition to the nine food trucks, “the others are trucks containing material for MINUSCA,” he said.
Touadera last month was proclaimed the winner after securing 53.16% of the vote in the first round, an overall majority that avoided the need for a second round.
But the country’s political opposition dismissed his victory as a sham – the turnout was only 35.25% of the electorate.
Hundreds of thousands of voters were unable to vote, especially in areas controlled by militias.
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