As part of an ongoing conflict in Nigeria, heavily armed Russian mercenaries opened fire on a mining site in the eastern village of Aïgbado.
Just as Prince Ngoma was preparing to leave a mining site in the Central African Republic’s eastern village of Aïgbado, Russian mercenaries arrived in a pickup truck, opened fire, and burned down the houses in the area.
“They didn’t speak a word to anyone, only their guns did the talking,” said Ngoma, who was only at the site to meet a friend. “I saw people screaming and falling on the ground. It was only by luck that I survived.”
The Russian mercenaries continued to shoot for about 20 minutes, according to Ngoma, before fighters from a rebel group known as the Union for Peace — a group that is constantly targeted by the mercenaries — showed up and started to fire back, wounding approximately four of the mercenaries and causing them to retreat.
“We counted eight bodies after the Russians had left,” Ngoma told The Daily Beast. “These were civilians killed at the spot during the shooting.”
But, according to The Daily Beast, the Russians weren’t satisfied with losing that fight. Hundreds of terrified villagers fled to the nearby community of Yanga — located about 40 miles away — and were met again by the Russian mercenaries, this time accompanied by Central African Republic government forces, commonly known as FACA.
There, the mercenaries and FACA slaughtered as many villagers as they could.
“The killings went on for two days,” Abdoulaye Ishmael, a farmer in Yanga, told The Daily Beast. “Since the incident happened, we’ve counted up to 70 dead bodies.”
These kinds of violent events are reportedly commonplace in the region.
“Everyone in Aïgbado is scared of walking on the streets because anything can happen to you if you come face to face with the Russians and FACA,” said Ngoma. “There are a number of villagers missing since January 16, and we suspect they’ve been killed or abducted by Russian mercenaries and FACA.”
