West African mediators say they will investigate the reported killing of 120 people in an Ivory Coast village after rebels blamed government forces for the slaughter and threatened to pull out of stalled negotiations to end their nearly three-month uprising.
Mohammed Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the regional bloc behind the peace initiative, said the mediators ”viewed with horror” the discovery of a mass grave in central Ivory Coast on Friday.
”We are yet to carry out any acts of verification into the discovery, but we will certainly do so in order to establish blame where it is due,” he said.
Chambas’ comments came after insurgents who launched the uprising September 19 threatened to pull out of talks in nearby Togo unless mediators issue a statement by Monday condemning the government for the killings in the Ivory Coast village of Monoko-Zohi.
”It is impossible to negotiate with those who perpetrate genocide and bloodthirsty acts against the people,” rebel negotiator Guillaume Soro said on Saturday.
Ivory Coast’s army and government has denied any wrongdoing, insisting the dead were not civilians, but rebels killed in combat.
Rebels insisted their forces were not in the area, and surviving villagers said the victims were merchants and African guest workers on the region’s lush cocoa and coffee fields.
Terrorised villagers on Saturday showed the blood-covered dirt paths and thinly covered corpses of what appeared to be the single worst-known bloodletting of a war that has killed hundreds, displaced thousands and crippled the economy of the regional powerhouse.
Accusing the villagers of feeding rebels, uniformed soldiers went house-to-house on November 27-28, shooting some victims on the spot and gathering others for execution later, survivors alleged.
Defence Minister Kadet said on Saturday the government had ordered an inquiry and would welcome an international investigation.
Peace talks have been deadlocked for weeks over rebel demands that Gbagbo resign and make way for new elections.
The rebellion has divided Ivory Coast into a rebel-held West and North, and a government-controlled South. Recent fighting has shattered an October 17 cease-fire agreed between northern rebels and the government.
The government has urged young men aged 20-26 to volunteer to fight the insurgents. State radio said on Sunday that 3 000 men were needed in what authorities are calling ”a general mobilisation.”
Volunteers can sign up from next Tuesday. The fiercest fighting is taking place in the West, near the border with Liberia, but a French army representative said on Sunday a rebel group had also attacked government positions in the East, near the border with Ghana.
The uncontrolled group was called to order by its chief, and the fighting south of Bouna was over, Lt. Col. Ange-Antoine Leccia said.
A representative for Ivory Coast’s army, Lt. Col. Jules Yao Yao, said on state television that two loyalist soldiers were injured in the rebel attack. He said it was ”carried out massively with mortars and rocket launchers,” and described it as a ”flagrant violation” of the cease-fire.
Yao Yao said the attack took place at the town of Kotouba, around 80-kilometres south of Bouna.
The fighting in the West has raised fears about the fate of tens of thousands of Liberians, who fled to Ivory Coast to escape a brutal civil war in their own country that ended in 1996. Now, many are heading back across the Cestos River to their devastated homeland, still gripped by a three-year uprising.
The UN refugee agency says around 30 000 refugees have already crossed into Liberia.
As the western rebels push east, there are fears some 17 000 Liberian refugees around the town of Guiglo could be trapped by the conflict.
Rebels pushed out of Toulepleu amid fierce fighting near the Liberian border this weekend, seizing the town of Blolekin, about 50 kilometres along the road to Guiglo. Guiglo is 120 kilometres east of Toulepleu.
”We’re preparing to move them somewhere safer,” UNHCR
representative Astrid van Genderen Stort said Sunday. ”We are very concerned about possible repercussions on refugees who are mainly Liberian or English-speaking.”
Fleeing residents have said the western rebels include Liberian fighters — especially feared in the region because of their poor discipline, looting and drug use. Government officials have also said Liberian and Sierra Leonean mercenaries are operating in the area, although the western rebels deny the reports.
There was no fighting reported on Sunday in Guiglo, which remained in government hands, a representative for the French army said.
French troops evacuated about 20 French citizens from Guiglo on Saturday, taking them to Daloa — a key cocoa city in government-held territory now protected by a well-fortified French checkpoint 60 kilometres to the west.
A 1 000-strong French contingent is in the former French colony to monitor the shattered ceasefire and protect its nationals.
The conflict has fanned simmering ethnic tensions. The northern rebels say they are fighting discrimination against mostly Muslim, northern groups by the largely Christian, southern groups that dominate government.
The western rebels say they want to avenge the death of the country’s former junta leader, who was killed in the first hours of the uprising. – Sapa-AP