UN: CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC CORPSE PROTEST WAS PROPAGANDA

NEW YORK - The UN says protesters who placed corpses in front of their headquarters in the Central African Republic (CAR) were using the bodies for "propaganda."

"Some people are using dead bodies... to say that we have killed civilians," a UN spokesman told the BBC.

On Wednesday, demonstrators calling for an end to violence put 17 bodies outside the UN building in Bangui.

They said the dead were innocent civilians killed in clashes between UN troops and armed groups.

But the UN says the dead were armed criminals who had been targeting peacekeepers and government soldiers. "They shot at our peacekeepers and we returned fire," UN spokesman Vladimir Monteiro said. "The bodies resulted from the clashes."

We condemn the fact that some people are using dead bodies for a kind of propaganda," he added.

UN troops began an operation on Sunday to disarm vigilantes in the PK5 neighbourhood of Bangui.

A self-styled Muslim militia is based there, purporting to protect residents. Monteiro told the BBC that the UN would continue the operation despite the angry protests. Mayor Atahirou Balla Dodo of the Bangui district in which the PK5 neighbourhood is located told Reuters a total of 21 people had been killed in the clashes. He said protesters had taken 17 bodies from the morgue but had left four others, two women and two children.