Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu warned Sunday that the Central African Republic was "on the brink of genocide," as he urged warring sides to reconcile their differences and "re-learn to live together."

"Over the past 13 months, the nation's seemingly incessant struggles for political power and resources have degenerated into anarchy, hatred and ethnic cleansing -- the country stands on the brink of genocide; some would say it has already commenced," Archbishop Emeritus Tutu said in a statement released by his peace foundation. 

U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that the conflict in Central African Republic could embroil the whole region and threaten global security.

"It's not easy to put Central African Republic on the map of concerns of public opinion in general and governments in particular," Guterres told AFP.

Chad said Wednesday it had withdrawn its entire contingent from the Central African Republic, in the wake of accusations its troops had carried out an unprovoked attack in the capital Bangui last month.

"The last soldier crossed the border on April 13," Souleyman Adam, the head of the Chadian unit with the African peacekeeping force MISCA, said at a ceremony in the southern town of Sarh.

Stifled by the heat inside a barn in the Central African Republic town of Boda, dozens of emaciated and often sick displaced people subsist in fear of the vigilantes who surround them.

The group, members of an extended family, fled to Boda from the village of Danga 25 kilometers (15 miles) away, seeking shelter from the anti-balaka -- or "anti-machete", mainly-Christian militia groups that have been hunting and killing members of the crisis-torn country's Muslim minority.

The Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to send 12,000 U.N. peacekeepers to Central African Republic, where violence between Christians and Muslims has triggered fears of genocide.

The resolution, submitted by France, will deploy up to 10,000 military personnel and 1,800 police to the former French colony, where sectarian violence has killed thousands in the last year.

At least 30 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in fighting between mainly Christian militia and predominantly Muslim rebels in the strife-torn Central African Republic, police said Wednesday.

The victims, "the majority of them civilians" caught in the crossfire, died during clashes Tuesday that also left more than 10 people wounded in the central town of Dekoa, police said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made an impassioned plea Saturday to the leaders of the strife-torn Central African Republic to prevent a new genocide on the continent, 20 years after Rwanda.

Ban, in Bangui for a brief visit en route to Rwanda to commemorate the anniversary of its genocide, told parliamentarians they had a duty to prevent a recurrence of the atrocities that claimed at least 800,000 lives in 1994.

Chad on Saturday dismissed as "defamatory and tendentious" U.N. accusations that its troops carried out an unprovoked attack when they opened fire in a crowded market in the Central African Republic's capital, killing at least 30 people.

"The government of the Republic of Chad expresses its surprise and indignation faced with the purported investigation published by the United Nations Human Rights Commission," said a government statement sent to Agence France Presse.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday strongly condemned the drawn-out conflict in the Central African Republic that has left thousands dead and over a million displaced.

"I am deeply troubled by the appalling atrocities against the civilians there," the U.N. secretary general told reporters during a visit to Czech capital Prague.

The Central African Republic "regrets" a decision by Chad to withdraw from the peacekeeping force trying to quell sectarian violence in the country, Foreign Minister Toussaint Kongo-Doudou said Friday.

"We learnt with a lot of regret of the announcement... of the withdrawal of Chadian troops from the MISCA (African-led force) in the Central African Republic," he said in a statement sent to Agence France Presse by the CAR embassy in Paris, a day after Chad announced the withdrawal after being accused of siding with a mainly Muslim movement that held power for most of last year.