GUEN, Central African Republic (AP) — There are no headstones to mark these graves, no loving words, nothing to tell the world who lies in these two giant pits full of bodies, or why. Yet a handful of village elders are determined that nobody will be forgotten.

These old men, their eyes clouded by cataracts and their ears hacked by machete blades, sit on dirty straw mats at a church and gather the names of the dead from broken survivors. They write each name carefully in Arabic with faded blue ink on lined paper, neatly folded and stored in the pocket of one man's tattered kaftan. The list is four pages long.

At least 5,186 people have died in Central African Republic since fighting between Muslims and Christians started in December, according to an Associated Press tally gleaned from more than 50 of the hardest-hit communities and the capital, Bangui. That's well more than double the death toll of about 2,000 cited by the United Nations back in April, when it approved a peacekeeping mission. The deaths have mounted steadily since, with no official record.

As the U.N. prepares to go into the Central African Republic next week, the death toll underscores how the aid is coming too late for thousands of victims. The about 2,000 extra troops to boost African forces fall short of the almost 7,000 authorized in April, with the rest expected by early 2015. Yet the conflict has turned out to be far more deadly than it was then, and warnings of potential mass carnage from former colonizer France and from the U.N. itself have gone unheeded.

"The international community said it wanted to put a stop to the genocide that was in the making. But months later, the war has not stopped, " says Joseph Bindoumi, president of the Central African Human Rights League, who collects handwritten testimonies from relatives stapled together with photos of their slain loved ones.

"On the contrary, it has gotten worse. Today, towns that were not under severe threat back in April have become the sites of true disasters."

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In this Aug. 28, 2014 photo, Hissein Abakar, sits in Boda, Central African Republic. Hissein, lost h …

Both life and death often go unrecorded in Central African Republic, a country of about 4.6 million that has long teetered on the edge of anarchy. Nobody knows just how many people have died in the grinding ethnic violence, and even the AP tally is almost certainly a fraction of the real toll.

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In this March 5, 2014, photo, Boda resident Bashir Bebe stands near where a dozen Muslims were burie …

The AP counted bodies and gathered numbers from dozens of survivors, priests, imams, human rights groups and local Red Cross workers, including those in a vast, remote swath of the west that makes up a third of the country. Many deaths here were not officially counted because the region is still dangerous and can barely be reached in torrential rains. Others were left out by overwhelmed aid workers but registered at mosques and at private Christian funerals.

The U.N. is not recording civilian deaths on its own, unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, for example. And it took months to gather troops from different countries for the mission, which will take over from regional peacekeeping forces on Sept. 15, said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary-general.

"Mobilizing troops for peacekeeping mission takes time because it's not like they're waiting in New York for us," Dujarric said Wednesday. "We have to go knock on doors for troops, for equipment, helicopters..."

The conflict started when Muslim rebels captured the capital last March, for the first time since independence from France in 1960. The rebels, known as the Seleka, killed hundreds, possibly thousands of Christians, leaving families to push the bodies of their loved ones to cemeteries in wheelbarrows and carts. Even when Christian militias forced the rebels to withdraw in late January, they killed as they went.

In the tiny Christian village of Nzakoun, where the only sounds after dark are of crickets and the occasional mango dropping on a rooftop, the roar of vehicles woke up 13-year-old Maximin Lassananyant in the dead of night in early February. Soon the gunshots rang out. The Seleka had come.

The rebels set ablaze more than two dozen houses. Then they went door-to-door, killing villagers and stealing everything they hadn't destroyed.

Maximin stumbled out of the hut where he slept with his mother and two siblings into the darkness, with only the moon to light his path. He hid for two days in the bush, petrified. He prayed that his family was just hiding someplace else.

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This Feb. 26, 2014, photo shows a handwritten list of the people slain in the town of Sibut by Musli …

Then the other survivors from the village found him. They told him it was time to come home and bury his family. The stones of his home still reeked of blood, caked on the ground and the walls inside.

Now it is only Maximin and his father, a traumatized man of few words, who remain, along with another brother who was away that fateful night. The boy's hands shake as he tries to write down the names of his family. He cannot bring himself to say them aloud.

A village chief has hand-printed the names of 22 buried victims on a weathered piece of paper from a classroom notebook. Maximin's mother, Rachel, is No. 11 on the list of females, and his 5-year-old sister Fani is No. 13. His 7-year-old brother Boris is on the list of males. A separate list details the homes destroyed, the people missing.

The sound of an unknown vehicle passing in Nzakoun still sends families fleeing back into the forest.

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It was only a matter of time — sometimes just hours — before the Christians took revenge.

The mounting hatred was fuelled in part by economic resentment. Muslims make up about 15 percent of the population, compared to Christians at 50 percent, yet Muslims ran the merchant class and the lucrative diamond business. As Christian militias took back control of town after town, they unleashed a violence believed to have left several thousands dead, mostly Muslims.

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A French soldier from the newly deployed EUFOR-RCA European Union military operation in the Central …

Soon after dawn one morning, Christian fighters stormed the outskirts of Guen, a town with a sizeable Muslim population because of the diamond mining nearby. They attacked the brick homes of Muslims, identifiable by fences traditionally put up all around them, and killed men in front of their children.

"We have suffered under the Seleka and now it is your turn," they screamed at the Muslims.

Within hours, 23 people were dead.

Several days later, the Christian fighters stormed a house in town where dozens of Muslim men and boys had sought refuge. A few escaped. The rest were herded at gunpoint to a shady lawn beneath two large mango trees, recalls a survivor.

Here the terrified victims were ordered to lie on their stomachs. Then the militia leader, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, began shooting them, one by one. He ordered his fighters to finish off the wounded with machete blows to the head.

In the end, 43 people were slain under the mango trees, including two 11-year-old boys.

A 10-year-old and a 13-year-old survived only by lying still amid the bloody corpses until darkness fell. Then they ran for their lives to a nearby town, according to other survivors, including the mother of one of the boys.

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Children stand during rain in front of Saint Michel Catholic church in the town of Boda April 14, 20 …

The lives of three Muslims in town were spared: They were the ones who transported the bludgeoned bodies to two mass graves on a wooden stretcher, still stained with blood months later.

A villager named Abakar lost four of his sons that day, all between the ages of 11 and 16. The thought of his boys awaiting certain death has him sobbing so hard he cannot speak. Even now he will only give his first name because he is so afraid that the militants will hunt him down.

"Each night before I go to sleep I pray to God that I don't have nightmares about that day," he chokes out between his sobs.

Two community leaders — both Christians — pleaded for the lives of the boys and men that day in Guen. They were told they too would be slain if they did not leave. They could not eat or sleep for days. "What more could we do?" they now say to each other, over and over.

Edmond Beina, the local leader of a Christian militia, is unrepentant. Everyone killed that day was a Seleka Muslim rebel, he says. Even the children.

Today, pages from holy Qurans blow through the grass at the house where the boys tried to hide. They are the only reminder of those who died.

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The violence is now bubbling up in previously stable corners, hitting both Christians and Muslims. In Bambari, northeast of the capital, at least 149 people were killed in June and July alone, according to witnesses, including about 17 Christians sheltering at a Catholic church compound. And in the Mbres area in the north, Muslim rebels left at least 34 people dead in August.

About 20,000 Muslims are trapped in isolated communities across the nation, despite a mass exodus earlier this year, according to a U.N. report in August. Among them is Saidou Bouba, who waits outside the mayor's office in the town of Boda.

Bouba had spent his entire life in this diamond town south of the capital. But when the Christian militia fighters burned his house down in early February, the 46-year-old herder knew it was time to leave.

So he and his family joined a group of 34 Muslim refugees heading for Cameroon. They took with them all their savings — some 300 cattle — to start a new life.

About 37 miles outside town, they stopped to rest beneath a tree. There, a group of heavily armed men on foot, wearing traditional Muslim clothing, opened fire on the crowd.

Bouba shouted in disbelief: "Why are you trying to harm your fellow Muslims?"

But they were not Muslims. They were Christian fighters wearing the clothes of their last victims. "Lie down, dogs!" the men shouted.

The last thing Bouba remembers is being knocked unconscious with a machete blow to the head.

When he awoke, he was surrounded by the bodies of his two wives and five children. Mama and Abdoulaye, both just 3 years old, Nafissa and Rassida, 6, and Mariam, 8, were all dead, their tiny heads bashed in with machetes.

Only Bouba and one other man survived. They sat among the 32 bodies for an entire day in shock before making their way back to town.

"I put everything now in the hands of God," he says softly, his face and head still scarred by machete wounds from that awful day. "He gave my family to me and then he took them away."

There are grieving fathers everywhere in this tiny enclave: Abakar Hissein has lost two sons, both shot to death, Ahmat earlier this year in Bangui and Ali on Aug. 20 in Boda. Hissein carried Ali's body back in his own arms. His wife has been missing for five months — he thinks she has made it to neighboring Chad — and does not know yet another son is dead.

Even in death, there is no peace for the victims.

Earlier this summer, a Muslim man was buried at a cemetery in Boda, just a mile away from the zone where Muslims are barricaded.

Later that evening, after the sun set, his body was dug up from the ground and set on fire.

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Associated Press writer Steve Niko in Boda, Central African Republic and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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Follow Krista Larson at https://www.twitter.com/klarsonafrica

"The family felt completely and utterly helpless when they heard this," said Barak Barfi, a friend of Sotloff who is serving as a spokesman for his family. "The Sotloffs felt there was nothing they could do to get Steve out."

The journalist's father, Art, was "shaking" after the meeting with the official, who works for the National Security Council, Barfi said. The families of three other hostages being held by the militant group Islamic State were also at the White House meeting, sources told Yahoo News.

The Sotloff family issued their statement after Diane Foley, the mother of murdered journalist James Foley, told ABC News that her family took statements by the White House counterterrorism official about legal bars to paying ransom as a "threat, and it was appalling. ... We were horrified he would say that. He just told us we would be prosecuted."

The Sotloffs “heard the same thing the Foleys did,” Barfi said in his statement to Yahoo News.

Addressing the issue at a White House press briefing today, press secretary Josh Earnest declined to discuss conversations that administration officials had with the families, but said: "We have found that terrorist organizations use hostage taking and ransoms as a critical source of financing for their organizations and that paying ransoms only puts other Americans in a position where they're at even greater risk."

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The family of 31-year-old journalist Steven Sotloff, who was beheaded by ISIS in early September, wa …

Earnest also said that "elements of the U.S. government were willing to take a significant risk and expend significant resources" to secure Foley's release. President Barack Obama was "so convinced that this was a priority" that he ordered a team of several dozen U.S. special operations forces into Syria earlier this summer in an attempt to rescue several American captives, including Foley. Once on the ground, the operators found that the hostages had been moved.

The murders of Foley and Sotloff, both of whom were beheaded by IS, were called "acts of barbarism" by Obama in his speech Wednesday night announcing a military campaign to destroy the terrorist organization.

Sources close to the families say that at the time of the White House meeting the Sotloffs and Foleys — after receiving direct threats from IS — were exploring lining up donors who would help pay multimillion-dollar ransoms to free their sons. But after the meeting those efforts collapsed, one source said, because of concerns that "donors could expose themselves to prosecution."

Although European hostages have been freed through ransom payments that have run into the millions of dollars, the Obama administration has taken a hard line against any such payments, viewing the transfer of cash as a violation of federal laws that forbid providing "material support" to a terrorist organization.

"They've been stricter than any administration on this," said a former law enforcement official who has been working with the families of IS hostages.

Barfi said that within a few hours of the White House meeting, he was at a separate meeting with State Department officials. One of those officials repeatedly mentioned the "material support" law and made it "clear," said Barfi, that criminal prosecutions could result if ransoms to the IS terrorists were paid.

'There was nothing they could do to get Steve out'

A beheaded reporter's family was told by a White House official they could be prosecuted for paying IS ransom.
Yahoo News exclusive

David Hale, in a statement after meeting Prime Minister Tammam Salam, said the aircraft would be bought with Saudi funds recently pledged to the Lebanese army.

"Over the last two weeks, a series of accelerated shipments of American arms and armaments have arrived here," Hale said.

"This week brought the delivery of more Hellfire missiles to the Lebanese Army."

"The Lebanese government and army have requested additional aircraft from the United States: an armed Cessna and other light air support aircraft," the statement added.

"It is our intention to support those requests for additional aircraft, using funds generously made available to Lebanon by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

Hale said another Cessna previously provided by the US to the Lebanese army would also be armed.

The pledges and arms deliveries come as several allies of Lebanon step up efforts to bolster its armed forces as the threat from jihadists in the region grows.

Lebanon was among 10 Arab states that pledged on Thursday to rally behind Washington against the Islamic State jihadist group that has terrorised parts of Iraq and Syria.

In August, Saudi Arabia pledged one billion dollars in funds to purchase military equipment for the Lebanese army, aid that came on top of three billion dollars it promised last year to buy French weapons.

The earlier weapons deal has dragged on, with no deliveries yet made, and the latest funding was intended to allow the speedy purchase and supply of much-needed materiel.

The additional funding was announced as the army battled an incursion from Syria by jihadists from several extremist groups, who are still holding hostage Lebanese soldiers and policemen.

Two of the soldiers have been beheaded by the Islamic State group, and efforts to negotiate the release of the remaining security forces, some of whom are being held by other jihadists, have stalled.

Hale said the weapons being provided by Washington "will help the army secure Lebanon's borders and defeat extremist groups that have crossed it".

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it would respond quickly with retaliatory measures to the latest round of U.S. sanctions that it criticized as another "hostile step", pledging to support affected companies with state funds.

The European Union and the United States have tightened economic penalties on Moscow, accusing it of sending troops to back pro-Moscow separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in eastern regions.

"Of course our retaliatory measures will not keep you waiting," the Foreign Ministry said in an online statement.

"We see Washington's introduction of new anti-Russian sanctions as another hostile step in line with the confrontational course taken by the American administration."

The ministry said the sanctions were short-sighted and would have no effect on government policy.

Earlier on Friday President Vladimir Putin, who has regularly denied any involvement in Ukraine and already responded with import bans and other steps, said any retaliatory measures would be taken carefully to avoid damaging the Russian economy.

The Kremlin has pledged to support companies affected and on Friday Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Russia may divert funds from its National Wealth Fund or from pensions.

"There are different forms of support. This includes various custom tariff regimes ... possibly direct budget support (and) the possibility of using pension funds or the National Wealth Fund and other mechanisms," he told journalists in Brussels in a statement later published on the Economy Ministry website.

Spending pressure on the government has increased as a result of the Ukraine crisis, which has led several Russian companies to request state finance to compensate for the closure of Western capital markets.

Last week, Putin said Russia cannot spend more of the $83 billion parked in its National Wealth Fund after the government raised the cap on how much of the fund can be used for domestic investments.

In August, Russia's largest oil company Rosneft asked the government for a $40 billion cash injection, to be financed from the NWF, to help it weather the sanctions.

Ulyukayev also said Russia would appeal to the World Trade Organisation. "The latest round of sanctions gives reason to appeal to the WTO. And we will appeal," RIA news reported him as saying in Brussels.

The drive for tougher sanctions has faced growing opposition from a number of EU countries that fear retaliation from Russia, the bloc's biggest energy supplier.

The EU has said it could lift some or even all of the sanctions if Moscow abides by a fragile truce in Ukraine and other parts of a peace plan agreed to try to end the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Alison Williams)

Moscow (AFP) - The first 35 vehicles in a second Russian aid convoy heading for rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine have crossed the border, Russian news agencies reported late Friday.

"Russian customs officers and border guards completed processing the first group of trucks... Now all 35 trucks have left the border crossing point towards Ukraine," Rayan Farukshin, spokesman for the southern customs office, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Rossiya 24 television reported from the Rostov region of southern Russia that the latest convoy of trucks is carrying a total of 2,000 tonnes of goods including cereals, pasta, sugar, medicines, diesel, electricity generators and blankets.

Rossiya 24 television reported that the whole convoy of more than 300 trucks was due to reach the border by Saturday morning.

Russia first sent an aid convoy of more than 200 trucks in August without the final agreement of Ukraine and Red Cross monitors.

The Minsk accord signed a week ago specified the provision of humanitarian aid to east Ukraine where hundreds of thousands of residents are suffering from shortages of basic supplies as well as a lack of running water and power amid widespread destruction from heavy shelling.