UNITED NATIONS, July 31. /TASS/. The United Nations will assist the Central African Republic’s authorities in the investigation of the death of three Russian journalists, spokesperson for the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), Vladimir Monteiro, told TASS over the phone on Tuesday.
"Of course we will assist national authorities, our police will assist national police with the investigation. The country has its police, but they called they don’t have all the capacity, so we will for sure assist them," he said.
According to the spokesperson, the United Nations has no information about the purpose of the three men’s stay in the Central African Republic. "We never said if they were journalists or not, we just collected the bodies and took them to the hospital," he said.
A United Nations spokesperson told TASS earlier that the bodies of the three men had been taken to the country’s capital city Bangui.
The Russian foreign ministry has confirmed the death of three Russian citizens with journalists’ IDs in the Central African Republic (CAR). "According to reports coming from the Central African Republic, three men having only press cards featuring the names Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguyev and Okhran Dzhemal, were found dead near the city of Sibut (300 kilometers north of the Central African Republic’s capital city Bangui) on July 30," the ministry said.
Russian diplomats are "in close contact with the local law enforcement agencies to clarify the circumstance of the death of the Russian nationals and organize transportation of their bodies to Russia," the ministry said. "Russia’s embassy in the Central African Republic, regrettably, was not notified about the stay of Russian journalists in that country.".