Nearly 9,000 people, mainly Muslims, have fled to Cameroon in just over a week to escape communal bloodshed in the Central African Republic, the United Nation's refugee agency said Friday.

In the past 10 days alone, 8,762 people have crossed into eastern Cameroon from strife-torn Central Africa, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokeswoman Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba told reporters in Geneva.

A mob lynched a Muslim on Friday after he fell off a crowded lorry taking frightened civilians out of the strife-torn capital of the Central African Republic, witnesses said.

A large convoy of lorries and taxis packed with Muslims fleeing Christian vigilantes headed north from Bangui under a slew of insults from angry residents, locals said.

The initial six-month mandate for French troops trying to quell deadly unrest in the Central African Republic is "likely" to be extended, France's defense minister said in an interview Thursday.

"It's likely," Jean-Yves Le Drian told French radio when asked if the mandate would be extended two months after the United Nations Security Council authorized French and African troops to intervene in the strife-torn country.

The United States on Wednesday called for an end to the "cycle of violence" in the Central African Republic after soldiers publicly lynched a suspected ex-rebel following a military ceremony.

The gruesome attack, widely captured on camera, happened mere moments after new interim president Catherine Samba Panza spoke of her pride in seeing the country's armed forces contribute to national security again.

The Central African Republic's interim president Catherine Samba Panza has re-appointed several ministers from her coup-leader predecessor's cabinet, national radio said Wednesday.

Samba Panza, a Christian who is tasked with restoring stability in a country torn apart by Christian-Muslim violence, kept some key figures from Muslim rebel leader Michel Djotodia's government, including the minister who liaises with French and African troops deployed to end the bloodshed.

A military ceremony in the Central African Republic ended in violence Wednesday after soldiers lynched a man to death who they suspected of being a former rebel, according to AFP journalists.

Minutes after the departure of officials from the ceremony in the capital Bangui, including interim President Catherine Samba Panza, the soldiers attacked a young man in civilian clothes, hitting, stabbing and throwing stones at him.

The U.N.'s World Food Program said Tuesday it was running out of food aid to distribute in the conflict-ravaged Central African Republic and would begin flying in supplies from Cameroon.

"The date when the air bridge will open has not yet been set but it is imminent," WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told reporters in Geneva.

Two months after French military intervention in the Central African Republic, French troops and African soldiers have largely disarmed Muslim ex-rebels in the capital, but major atrocities prevail.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday that "at the security level, there are signs of pacification. The African troops are gaining strength. European troops are going to join us."

At least 75 people have been killed in clashes in a town in the strife-torn Central African Republic since Tuesday and the fighting is still going on, a local priest told AFP.

Cassien Kamatari said his parish was sheltering 1,500 people who had fled the violence between Christians and Muslims in the town of Boda, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of the capital Bangui.

Around 200 rebel fighters in the Central African Republic who surrendered to African Union troops at the weekend in the key town of Sibut fled overnight, a military source said on Sunday.

"Unfortunately they fled in the night. They've gone to Kaga Bandoro," an officer in the African Union force (MISCA) told Agence France Presse.