Life began returning to the Central African Republic capital Bangui on Saturday, two days after deadly clashes, but witnesses said an order for troops to return to barracks had gone largely unheeded.

Bangui's terrified inhabitants had been confined to their homes since an explosion of sectarian violence early Thursday that the Red Cross said claimed at least 300 lives.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced "profound alarm" Friday over the escalating bloodshed in the Central African Republic, issuing an urgent appeal for restraint to protect civilians.

The U.N. Integrated Peacebuilding Office in the country (BINUCA) had reported further killings overnight, driving the death toll higher, Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

French President Francois Hollande told some 40 African leaders at a Paris summit Friday that the continent must "ensure its own security" in order to "take charge of its destiny".

He also promised that France would help with the potential creation of a special African rapid reaction force and would train up to 20,000 soldiers each year.

Britain is contributing a C-17 transport plane to help the French U.N.-backed mission in the Central African Republic, which is due to arrive there shortly, the Foreign Office said Friday.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain was "determined to play our part in helping to address the violence" following a new bloodbath that left dozens of bodies strewn in the streets of the capital Bangui.

Violence in the capital of the Central African Republic has left 92 dead and 155 wounded in one Bangui hospital, Doctors Without Borders said Friday, in a new toll.

"Community hospital: 155 wounded in two days, 92 bodies in the mortuary", the charity said in a brief message sent to Agence France Presse. Doctors Without Borders, which has medical and surgical staff working in the hospital, was unable to say whether the bodies brought to the mortuary on Friday morning were people killed overnight or those left dead in the street on Thursday.

France's defense chief said military operations began overnight in Central African Republic, with patrols and a helicopter detachment arriving to quell violence in the streets of the capital.

Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Radio France Internationale that the streets of Bangui were calm on Friday, after a spasm of bloodshed that began before dawn Thursday and left nearly 100 people dead.

A proposal to dispatch an EU force to the Central African Republic to help African and French troops has failed to convince defense heavyweights Britain and France, diplomats said Thursday.

Under the proposal, a unit of up to 1,500 troops known as the EU "Battle Group" -- a force designed for quick intervention abroad and currently led by Britain -- would have gone into the strife-torn country for up to four months to give a larger African force time to fan out and organize.

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously backed an African and French military intervention to halt deadly chaos in Central African Republic.

A French-drafted resolution gives a U.N. mandate to about 4,800 African and French troops being sent to the impoverished nation, which is facing growing Muslim-Christian strife.

Central African Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye pleaded Thursday for France to intervene in his violence-ridden nation as soon as the U.N. issues a green light.

The U.N. Security Council was due to vote later Thursday on a resolution authorizing thousands of African and French troops to end anarchy in the Central African Republic, where mass killings have triggered fears of genocide.

Rebels began withdrawing from the Central African capital of Bangui as the country on Sunday awaited an international intervention to halt the downward spiral of violence in the country.

The rebels' retreat came ahead of what is expected to be a key week for the strife-torn country as its crisis tops the international diplomatic agenda.