By Paul-Marin Ngoupana BANGUI, April 26 (Reuters) - A Central African Republic lawmaker made a rare public appeal to the president on Thursday to end violent abuses by government forces blamed for forcing thousands of villagers to flee into the bush. Two years of rebel attacks and reprisals by government troops, who torch northwestern villages suspected of helping the rebels, have driven more than 200,000 people from their homes including an estimated 70,000 who fled to Chad and Cameroon. Thousands crossed the border to Cameroon a week ago when government soldiers raided the town of Mann and nearby villages in pursuit of gunmen who had attacked a town a few days earlier. The soldiers killed at least one man and amputated the arm of another as he tried to flee, a local mayor told Reuters. Marie Agba, a member of parliament for the area, appealed for President Francois Bozize to intervene. "We ask the minister of defence, who is none other than the head of state himself, to put a stop to this kind of excess and to teach his soldiers the difference between rebels and peaceful people, so the army regains at least a sense of humanity," Abga said in a broadcast on state radio. United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF says studies indicate some 15 percent of women across the north of the country have been raped, while 450 children die each week from malnutrition and preventable disease. "We ask the international community to help these people because men, women, children and the elderly are wandering desperately around the bush. Hunger is already banging on their doors and when the rains come their lives will be very hard." Agba is one of very few public figures to speak out about the abuses by loyalist forces, even though in private members of the government acknowledge the responsibility of the army and the feared presidential guard in the violence. Landlocked and deeply poor, Central African Republic has suffered years of unrest and military coups, one of which brought Bozize to power in 2003. He was elected president in 2005, but has failed to establish control over much of a country which is larger than France but has just 4 million people. A rebel group attacked the isolated northeastern town of Birao last year, opening up another front for the ill-equipped army to fight and sending thousands more people fleeing for their lives. Regional analysts said the violence was fuelled by war in the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan. Former colonial power France sent special forces backed by fighter jets and helicopters to help government troops recapture Birao and the surrounding settlements, but insecurity is rife.
