By Paul-Marin Ngoupana BANGUI, April 21 (Reuters) - Thousands of people have fled fighting in northwestern Central African Republic, some swimming over the border after their homes were torched during government raids to hunt down rebels, local officials said on Saturday. Government soldiers launched raids on villages on the northwest border with Cameroon and Chad between Tuesday and Thursday to try to root out gunmen who attacked a town last weekend, the mayor of some of the affected settlements said. "Thousands of people from the town of Mann, the villages of Kodi, Ngbama, Ndanga and Kore in my commune and Bokolere, Bang and Ngouboye in the next commune have all gone into hiding in Cameroon," Mayor Richard Laoutaye told Reuters by phone. "Some swam across the river Mbere, some took pirogues (wooden fishing boats), while some were able to cross a bridge by foot. Others are in the bush and have health and food problems," he said. One man was killed in the town of Mann and another suspected of being a rebel had his arm amputated by government soldiers as he tried to flee, Laoutaye said, speaking from refuge in Cameroon after himself being beaten by soldiers. In the village of Ndanga, soldiers burned down more than 100 homes after six men arrested there managed to escape, he said. Central African Republic, a landlocked former French colony, ranks near the bottom of almost all development rankings. Its ill-resourced government has control of little beyond the capital Bangui and banditry is rife. The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said this month the country faced a growing humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a million people -- a quarter of the population -- disrupted by civil and regional warfare involving various rebel groups. "ANOTHER RWANDA" The government signed a peace accord with rebels in the northeast, which borders troubled Chad and Sudan's Darfur region, just over a week ago, establishing a ceasefire. But swathes of the country remain unstable, creating what aid workers have termed a "forgotten" humanitarian crisis. "Our population is hostage to rebels, hostage to bandits, and an enemy of the army meant to protect it. And in the face of all that, neither the president, who is also minister of defence, nor the U.N., nor the Central African human rights league, is reacting," said Marie Agbe, a local Kodi deputy. "We do not want another Rwanda here. We do not want a genocide in Central African Republic," she said by phone. President Francois Bozize, who seized power in a 2003 coup and then won an election in 2005, has been to trying to make peace deals with several rebel groups across the country. Under a bilateral defence accord, former colonial power France sent special forces backed by helicopters and fighter jets to the northeast late last year to help government troops. The United Nations appealed in January for richer countries to provide $11.7 million to fund basic health, schooling and water programmes in the country, but only $2.5 million had been pledged by the start of this month. UNICEF says studies indicate some 15 percent of the adult female population across the north have been raped, contributing to a surge in HIV/AIDS, while some 450 children die each week in the region from malnutrition and preventable disease.
