Bangui, Central African Republic — The wounded man sat in an armchair in front of a shack on the edge of the airport runway, his arms and head heavily bandaged.
“I kept repeating, ‘I do not have weapons,’ ” he said. His attackers said nothing, he recalled: “It was only machete cuts.”
The man, Abdon Seredangaru, 25, a primary-school teacher, was one of the many hundreds attacked in three days of mass killings this month here in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. More than 450 people were massacred in the city, according to the United Nations, and 150 others nationwide. Hundreds more, like Mr. Seredangaru and his family, narrowly escaped death.
The family of eight is among the 40,000 people camped at Bangui’s airport, seeking safety alongside the French troops who have controlled it since their deployment last week to stem the country’s sectarian violence, which has alarmed officials around the world. The Africans live in the open on a road that runs beside the runway and have erected rough shelters where women cook on open charcoal fires.
People wander through the camp in a constant stream: women with children tied on their backs, teenagers carrying water, men fetching food and hawking wares.
The arrival of French troops, and a contingent of African Union troops airlifted in by the American military, has brought some stability, and everyday life is slowly returning to the capital. Crowds jostled at the banks downtown as women in colorful dresses and high heels turned up for work.
But for the people at the airport, there has been no easing of the fear. They are city residents who fled their neighborhoods and dare not go back, saying militia fighters remain there. A few had tried to return home but had been chased out again, bringing more people with them to the camp, said Lindis Hurum, a coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, the medical relief organization.
“They are urban people, they are qualified people — they don’t want to be here,” she said. “It is cold on the ground, they have no food, and their money is running out.”
“It is going to get worse here,” she added.
Next to Mr. Seredangaru sat his father, Maurice, 68, an upright man in a gray suit. On his lapel, he wore a badge that declared him the chief of his district. His bald head was patched with a white dressing.
“I dodged several machete blows,” he said. “They struck me on the head and across my fingers.”
Four men burst into their house on Dec. 7. The invaders were members of Seleka, the mostly Muslim rebel force that has controlled the country since overthrowing President François Bozizé in a coup in March. The rebels have become a law unto themselves, perpetrating massacres and looting across the country, forcing thousands of people from their homes.
Over the last few months, Christian militias called anti-Balaka, or anti-machete, have sprung up in the countryside in self-defense, though they have been accused of committing reprisal killings of their own. On Dec. 5, they tried to seize control of Bangui.
Townspeople woke to furious gunfire before dawn. Some even began celebrating in some neighborhoods when they heard that the anti-Balaka had taken the city. But the Seleka rebels were far better armed and repulsed the attackers within a couple of hours. They then went into the Christian neighborhoods to pursue suspected collaborators. They ended up killing anyone who dared to venture out, according to residents who managed to flee to the airport.
Hector Nguerepayo, 25, who was going to check on his aunt, was killed in the street, said his father, Simplice, a philosophy teacher who found him later in a city morgue. “We don’t know what happened,” Mr. Nguerepayo said, his face blank with shock and sleeplessness. “He was shot twice, in the chest and in the head.”
He left behind an 18-month-old son, and his wife was expecting another, Mr. Nguerepayo said. Another son stood silent beside him. “We are living here in the camp now. We cannot go home.”
The Seredangarus had thought of fleeing to the airport as many neighbors evacuated, but they were well known and respected in the neighborhood. “I thought we could stay,” Abdon Seredangaru said.
His father said friends and relatives had visited their home to check on them after the first bloodletting. That was enough to ignite suspicions among the Seleka, who were still jumpy and on a killing spree.
The rebels who attacked them demanded that they hand over the weapons and money they had received from the Bozizé government. When the two said they had no weapons, the conversation was over.
“He slashed me on the head with a machete,” the son said. “I put my arms up to cover my head. He cut me three or four times on the head, and twice on the hands. There was blood everywhere.”
One attacker beat him with a baseball bat, on his shoulders and arms. Then one moved in wielding the rebels’ favorite weapon, a curved sickle that they use for cutting throats and decapitating their victims. He sliced the younger Mr. Seredangaru across the back of the head, cutting him deep in the base of the skull. Mr. Seredangaru fell forward, unconscious.
The militia left, and his father bound his wounds and dragged him out of the house into the bush grass. There the father called for help on his cellphone.
Now they live in a small hut made from sticks and sacks on the edge of the runway. Gray military planes bank low overhead. “The calm has not returned,” the elder Mr. Seredangaru said. “Until they are disarmed, we cannot go back.”
“How long will we be here? That is a question mark,” his son said.
The Seleka rebels have been confined to barracks but not yet disarmed. Meanwhile, the anti-Balaka militias are camped a few miles beyond the city edges. They are far less well armed yet seem intent on pushing into the city.
Some of them mingled in the crowd at the airport camp. They looked like peasants, small and wiry, poorly dressed, and wore amulets tied across their bodies. They had no visible weapons. Just one man carried a quiver of steel-tipped arrows.
Some ventured into the city on Monday night and set up a barricade at an intersection. French troops chased them away shortly after dawn and had departed by the afternoon, leaving the intersection wide open again.