Twelve more children in the Central African Republic have accused European soldiers and United Nations peacekeepers of sexual abuse, the United Nations said on Friday, with one senior official saying such abuse was "rampant" there.
Foreign troops were deployed in Central African Republic after mainly Muslim rebels seized power in the majority Christian country in 2013, provoking reprisals and fuelling religious and inter-communal violence that has killed thousands.
French troops have been in the country since December 2013. European Union troops were there from April 2014 to March 2015. A United Nations peacekeeping mission assumed authority from African Union troops in September 2014.
U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support, Anthony Banbury, appeared emotional while announcing the new U.N. cases.
"It's hard to imagine the outrage that people working for the United Nations and for the causes of peace and security feel when these kinds of allegations come to light, particularly involving minors, which is so hard to understand," Banbury said.
"The United Nations is doing everything we possibly can to assist the victims, to bring accountability and justice ... and hopefully to prevent any such cases from recurring," he told reporters in New York.
Six children accused troops from France, Georgia and an unidentified European country of sexual abuse, said to have occurred mostly in 2014 in or near a camp for displaced people next to the airport in Central African Republic's capital Bangui.
Those three countries and the European Union are investigating the accusations, the United Nations said.
Another six children accused U.N. troops from Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Morocco and U.N. police from Senegal of sex abuse. The number of allegations made in 2015 against U.N. peacekeepers is now 22.