Bodies litter the streets
of Central African Republic capital

Red Cross workers said Thursday that they have recovered 44 bodies from the streets of Central African Republic's capital Bangui following fierce inter-religious fighting in the past two days. The violence also left six Chadian peacekeepers dead.

Georgios Georgantas, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation, said the bodies were probably only a fraction of those killed in Bangui, as his teams had been unable to access certain parts of the city.

A representative of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) at Bangui's main hospital said it had received more than 50 people with gunshot or machete wounds since Wednesday night.

Thousands of French and African peacekeepers have been unable to contain a flare-up in violence in the past week. The mostly Muslim Seleka rebels who seized power in March and Christian self-defense militias have carried out tit-for-tat attacks on each other and increasingly on local civilians not directly involved in the conflict.

"Violence has been at extremely high levels," Georgantas told Reuters. "We have information about more bodies in certain parts of town which we have been unable to access because the fighting was so intense."

The Central African Republic has tilted into anarchy, as the country's Christian majority has sought to dislodge the Muslim group that seized power in a coup nine months ago. Both Christian and Muslim civilians are now armed, and the international troops brought in to try to rein in the violence are accused of having taken sides. And many civilians are caught in the middle.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said through a spokesperson Thursday that he is "saddened by the deaths of six peacekeepers from the African-led International Support Mission (MISCA)."

He added that he "calls on all parties and citizens to cooperate with the African Union and French forces."

"Their mission is to provide desperately needed security. They are not part of the conflict between Central Africans," Ban said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry released a statement condemning the violence, and urging a solution through "a political process that leads to fair and inclusive elections as soon as possible, but not later than February 2015, so that CAR can have a legitimate government that represents the will of the people." 

A spokesman for the African Union peacekeeping mission said Chadian peacekeepers were attacked by gunmen in the Gabongo neighborhood near the airport on Wednesday. The AU force is scheduled to reach 6,000 soldiers by the end of January from nearly 4,000 at present.

Two French troops were killed this month, just days after Paris deployed a 1,600-strong peacekeeping mission to its former colony in early December under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

On Thursday, the United Nations emergency response office said in a statement that some 639,000 people out of a population of 4.5 million are displaced. Altogether, 2 million people need humanitarian aid.

Al Jazeera and wire services