By Alistair Thomson BIRAO, Central African Republic, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Outside Birao's hospital stands a four-wheel-drive ambulance, but it has no wheels. "It's been there a long time. They just looted it a bit more for the spare parts," said a field worker for the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF, one of a few agencies helping the remote Central African Republic town recover from a rebel occupation. Already grappling with grinding poverty -- almost four in five people in the area live below the poverty line -- Birao in the country's far northeast was seized for six weeks late last year in a regional wave of violence linked to the conflict raging in nearby Sudan. "On Oct. 30, at 4 a.m., they attacked the military base here," one resident, a civil servant who did not wish to give his name, told Reuters in Birao on Sunday. "They raped the women, they raped the girls," he said. Central African Republic has been racked for years by military coups, army mutinies and bloody uprisings even before the latest spillover from the four-year-old war in Darfur. Since President Francois Bozize, a former army chief, seized power in 2003, some of the fighters and Chadian mercenaries who helped him have defected to rebel groups, causing widespread violence, mainly in northwestern areas. Birao's mayor, Ahamat Moustapha Am-Gabo, said rebels first attacked the town a couple of years ago, but left after a few hours of looting. In October, it seemed they had come to stay. Like many townsfolk, Am-Gabo fled on foot, walking the 65 km (40 miles) to the Sudanese border. "We lived by our own means. There was no humanitarian support," he said. NERVOUS RESIDENTS There they waited for six weeks, surviving as best they could, until loyalist forces retook the town in an operation backed by troops, helicopters and fighter jets from former colonial power France. French soldiers have stayed on to safeguard the town, along with a medley of Central African, Chadian and Sudanese soldiers loyal to Bozize. Many, including those driving a jeep mounted with an anti-aircraft gun which greets planes at the town's airport, wear the yellow turbans favoured by Chadian soldiers. Birao's residents have come home, but many seem nervous, running away at the sound of a gun being cocked in a minor argument between government fighters and town officials on Sunday. Last week a woman was shot dead as she travelled back to Birao in a pickup truck, Mayor Am-Gabo said. The United Nations has proposed sending peacekeepers to secure Birao and the border triangle between Chad, Sudan and Central African Republic which has been used as a corridor by fighters from all three countries. But U.N. officials say there needs to be an internal peace deal first. A U.N. assessment mission to northeast CAR said last month that violence including ethnic attacks and village burnings had driven around 40,000 of the area's 200,000 residents from their homes. Birao's residents say that since the rebels came and looted their grain stores and herds, they are worried about how they will make it through to the next harvest in October. "The crop was in the storehouses; they took everything. If the people were able to sell that, they would be able to buy seeds for the new season, but they have no money," the civil servant said.
