/ 11 January 2011

Gbagbo forces descend on Côte d’Ivoire neighbourhood

Security forces loyal to incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo opened fire on Tuesday as they drove through a neighbourhood where supporters of the election’s internationally recognised winner said they had killed two police officers.

The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force sent nine vehicles to the scene, where dozens of young men screaming and shouting had erected a roadblock out of a table and sticks. The peacekeepers turned around and started leaving the area.

The military trucks arrived in the neighbourhood hours after residents described attacking two officers who had been conducting raids in the area known as PK 18. The district overwhelmingly voted for Alassane Ouattara, who the UN said won the November 28 election.

Gbagbo, who refuses to cede power despite mounting international pressure and a possible regional military ouster, maintains control of the country’s military. Human rights groups accuse his security forces of abducting and killing hundreds of political opponents since the vote.

Officers taken down
Marco Boubacar, head of the New Forces rebels who are allied to Ouattara, said people attacked the police officers with their bare hands.

“We were able to take down two men in uniform,” he said.

The two deaths could not be independently confirmed, but other witnesses said they also had seen the police officers’ bodies.

The area is not far from the site where Charles Ble Goude, the leader of a pro-Gbagbo youth group, is expected to hold a rally on Tuesday afternoon. Some describe the hardline Young Patriots as an armed militia.

Goude, who was placed on a UN sanctions list in 2006 for his role in inciting violence, has been leading daily rallies, gathering thousands of pro-Gbagbo youth to warn that there will be no peace if Gbagbo is forced out.

“They shouldn’t kid themselves and imagine that they can come and remove [Gbagbo] like some sort of orphan … Because in every Ivorian there is a Gbagbo,” Goude told the Associated Press in a sit-down interview on Monday. “Do they want to govern a Côte d’Ivoire cemetery?”

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the UN refugee agency said 25 000 Ivorian civilians have now fled to neighbouring Liberia since the disputed election. A spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said 600 more refugees are arriving in Liberia daily.

Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that the United Nations is setting up a refugee camp for 18 000 people in the eastern Liberian town of Bahn. — Sapa-AP