4 Killed as Presidency Says 'Negative Forces' Trying to Destabilize C. Africa

The Central African Republic's presidency on Wednesday said "negative forces" were trying to destabilize the interim government after fresh violence claimed four lives overnight.

"Heavy and light weapons were handed out to people, especially to youths, to sow terror in the land and call for the resignation of the transitional President (Catherine Samba Panza)," the president's office said in a statement.

"A coalition of negative forces has been formed and has orchestrated an attempted institutional coup d'etat," the statement said.

Samba Panza had met Saturday with leaders of so-called "anti-balaka" militias who had called on her to resign.

The impoverished former French colony has been torn apart by revenge killings and attacks between the mainly Muslim ex-Seleka rebels who led a March 2013 coup and the anti-balaka militias formed by the Christian majority in response.

Ten days of violence have left more than a dozen dead in the capital Bangui, including a U.N. peacekeeper, following a lull in recent months in the chronically unstable country.

Wednesday's statement by Samba Panza's spokeswoman Antoinette Montaigne Moussa said unidentified coup plotters had spread lies and paid money to people to erect barricades in Bangui "to discourage people from circulating, to paralyze the country and so destabilize" the transitional authorities.

Three civilians were killed and several others were injured following the lynching of a militiaman by residents of an eastern neighborhood of Bangui near the prime minister's residency, a U.N. source told Agence France-Presse, requesting anonymity.

The presidency's first reaction to the violence came as Samba Panza's government prepared to face a grilling in parliament on Wednesday over the apparent disappearance of $10 million it was given in cash by the Angolan government.

The latest clashes have forced thousands to flee their homes.

More than 400,000 people have been internally displaced since the coup threw the country into chaos.

The recent clashes also involved foreign forces – U.N., French and European -- sent to help restore peace.