US offers $100 mln to aid African troops in Central African Republic...

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The United States is pledging up to $100 million to help support African Union efforts in the Central African Republic, the U.S. State Department said on Friday.

"The United States remains deeply concerned about the horrific violence committed by armed groups against innocent civilians" in the Central African Republic, department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement.

The funds are to assist the African Union-led International Support Mission in the Central African Republic, or MISCA, with non-lethal equipment and training as well as logistical and planning support, the department said.

Also, the European Union will decide next month on a joint operation in the Central African Republic in support of U.N.-backed French military intervention to stabilise a country racked by sectarian violence, French President Francois Hollande said.

He told a news conference that several European countries had already offered help and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton would propose a range of options for a joint European mission to be decided in late January. Their presence was more important for political than for financial support, he said.

France sent some 600 troops to its former colony this month to stop massacres between Muslim and Christian militias sparked by a March coup.

Earllier, Christian militia forces known as 'anti-balaka' attacked Muslim neighborhoods of the capital of Central African Republic, according to residents and African peacekeepers, sending heavy and light arms fire ringing out across Bangui.

"Anti-balaka fighters attacked the PK 5 neighborhood and another neighborhood called Fatima," said a spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping force, MISCA. He said MISCA troops were on their way to the fighting.

The spokesman also said that a Chadian peacekeeper injured in an attack on a MISCA patrol on Thursday had died of his wounds.

REUTERS