Bloodshed in Bangui: A Day That Will Define Central African Republic

The phone rang just before dawn. On the other end, call after call, were voices informing William Daniels, the French photojournalist, of fresh attacks on several districts in Bangui, the ramshackle capital of the crisis-hit Central African Republic. Not a day earlier, on Dec. 4, the fighters he met in the bush, an hour’s walk from the center of town, had said that wouldn’t happen: That men with big knives and guns wouldn’t come in to attack the men who attacked them first.