By Paul-Marin Ngoupana BANGUI, March 21 (Reuters) - Almost the entire population of Central African Republic's northeastern town of Birao have fled into surrounding scrubland after clashes between government forces and rebels this month, a U.N. official said on Wednesday. Schools, a hospital and the majority of homes in the remote town near the borders with Chad and Sudan's Darfur region had been looted or burned to the ground, said Toby Lanzer, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the former French colony. "Close to 14,000 people lived in Birao before the recent clashes," Lanzer said in a statement after returning from the town, a three-hour flight from the capital Bangui and virtually unreachable by road for large parts of the year. "The U.N. estimates that there are now no more than 600 people living in the town ... As well as houses burned by government forces ... the U.N. team confirmed that the town's schools and hospital have been destroyed and looted." France sent special forces backed by helicopters and fighter jets to dislodge rebel fighters from Birao and the surrounding area in December and has maintained forces in and around the town since. In the latest reported heavy fighting, the rebels attacked French army positions in the town in early March after French warplanes bombed their troops. Central African Republic's government says the rebels destabilising its north have been helped from Sudan and the region has been used as a safe corridor by rebels attacking Chadian territory. Diplomats fear increased rebel activity, fuelled by a spillover of the violence in Darfur, where more than 2 million people have been uprooted by a political and ethnic conflict which has been raging since 2003. The U.N.'s new humanitarian and emergency relief coordinator John Holmes is due to visit Darfur, Chad and Central African Republic in a 10-day tour this month, all of them areas where violence has made aid workers' task near impossible. "My mission aims to shed light on the terrible situation in the north of Central African Republic as well as our difficulties in bringing an adequate response because of a lack of financial means and humanitarian actors on the ground," Holmes, who has arrived in Sudan, said in a statement.
