Troops from several EU countries will begin deploying in the strife-torn Central African Republic next month, a French official said Sunday.

"In March, in a few weeks, there will be in the Central African Republic several hundred troops coming from several countries of the European Union," the junior minister for European affairs, Thierry Repentin, told French media.

The European Union has asked Turkey to contribute to a military mission to help end sectarian unrest in the Central African Republic, a Turkish official said Sunday.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton wrote a letter to Ankara on Friday asking about the prospects of Turkish assistance, the official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

French and African peacekeepers on Saturday launched a major push to disarm militias in the capital of the strife-torn Central African Republic, going house to house searching for weapons.

The operation was launched in the early morning hours in Bangui's Boy Rabe neighborhood, the base of mostly Christian militias whose attacks have driven many minority Muslims from the city in recent weeks, sparking warnings of "ethnic cleansing".

The international community must act swiftly to halt bloodshed in the Central African Republic, United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon said Friday, warning that unchecked atrocities and sectarian cleansing could lead to decades of conflict.

The U.N. Secretary-General said that parts of the strife-torn country with no history of violence were being drawn into the conflict, and entire Muslim communities had fled in what has been described as an "exodus of historic scale."

The European Union plans to send around 1,000 troops to the Central African Republic to help restore order, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Friday.

Earlier estimates had the bloc sending about 500 troops. "We have more than 500 troops," Ashton told reporters after a U.N. Security Council meeting, adding that the European Union was "looking at double that number."

France said Friday it was sending 400 more troops to the Central African Republic as concern grows over the country's horrific violence.

After a meeting of the top French defense committee, President Francois Hollande said Paris was boosting its troop presence in the CAR to 2,000.

More EU member states are now ready to commit troops to help French and African Union forces in the troubled Central African Republic, diplomatic sources said Friday.

Besides France, five other European Union countries have proposed a "substantial" contribution to the EUFOR RCA mission, expected to begin in March, one source said.

Thirteen decomposing corpses have been discovered in a camp housing ex-rebels in the strife-torn Central African Republic, a prosecutor told Agence France Presse on Friday.

The corpses, some mere skeletons, were found in a disused fuel tank at a camp of former fighters of the mostly Muslim Seleka rebel group whose coup a year ago sparked the country's descent into chaos.

The wanted deputy of Uganda's murderous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, Okot Odhiambo, may have been killed in recent fighting, the Ugandan defense minister told Agence France Presse Friday.

Odhiambo was indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2005, along with LRA chief Joseph Kony and fellow rebel Dominic Ongwen, on charges of butchering and kidnapping civilians.

The U.N. children's agency on Friday said it was horrified at how children are being maimed and killed, including by beheadings, in the sectarian violence engulfing the Central African Republic.

"There is no future for a country where adults can viciously target innocent children with impunity," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF regional director for west and central Africa.