ALAN RAYBOULD, Abidjan | Monday
FORCES loyal to the Ivory Coast government have regained control of the state radio headquarters in central Abidjan after dissident soldiers who had seized it overnight in an apparent coup bid left without a fight, local residents said.
”The (paramilitary) gendarmes just went in. There was no fighting,” a man who lives in the area said. A diplomatic source said people were leaving the radio building peacefully.
Heavy firing erupted in the centre of the country’s commercial capital just before midnight on Sunday, and dissident soldiers, their identity and motives unknown, attacked state radio and state television in another part of town.
Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou said earlier on Monday that a coup attempt had been thwarted and loyalist forces had retaken the television station.
”There is no more fighting in the streets…their attempted coup d’etat has failed,” said the minister, who had earlier said that the government had expected a coup attempt and had been prepared.
Boga Doudou did not say who might be behind the coup attempt in the former French colony.
Ten months of military rule in the West African country ended in a wave of people power protests last October against attempts by army ruler Robert Guei to rig the presidential poll that brought President Laurent Gbagbo to power.
Residents in the Cocody area, where the television is located, confirmed there had been a big battle. But shooting and loud explosions were heard from the area sometime after Boga Doudou had spoken.
Firing, some of it sustained bursts of machine gun fire, could be heard through the night from central Abidjan. There was no immediate report of casualties.
Sources said Gbagbo had been at his home village of Mama over the weekend and was expected to return to his office on Monday.
Officials said an attack by mutineers had been beaten off at the Agban camp of the paramilitary gendarmerie, which is seen as loyal to Gbagbo and sided with him during the protests that swept him to power.
Ivory Coast’s first coup, on Christmas Eve 1999, brought Guei to power and ended the country’s traditional reputation as a haven of stability in a turbulent region.
But the end of military rule has brought little calm to the world’s biggest cocoa producer. At least 200 people have been killed since then in ethnic and political violence involving supporters of former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, who was barred by the courts from contesting the presidency on nationality grounds. – Reuters