Rebels boasted of their firepower, government troops stealthily crept upon them and French soldiers rolled into the countryside to protect, and possibly rescue, their people as Ivory Coast geared up for a finale to its bloodiest-ever uprising.
Once an oasis of stability in a region scarred by some of Africa’s most brutal wars, this West African nation was awash with bitter talk of war and riven by ethnic rivalries as frightened residents waited for a long-heralded clash between government forces and insurgents.
By early on Monday, the rebel soldiers remained in control of Bouake, the second-largest city in this former French colony, and of Korhogo, an opposition stronghold in the north, despite repeated government assurances that an attack was imminent.
”We are armed to the teeth, and there is no going back,” a rebel commander known by the nom de guerre Samsara 110 declared, speaking from Korhogo.
The insurgents apparently include a core group of 700-800 ex-soldiers angry over their recent purge from the army for suspected disloyalty. The attempt to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, which began on Thursday, has already cost 270 lives and injured around 300.
The rebels’ choice to take refuge in mainly Muslim cities has dangerously underscored the country’s north-south, Muslim-Christian divides – the fault line that lies behind hundreds of deaths since the country’s first coup in 1999. The same rifts have opened in branches of the country’s security forces since the 1999 coup.
Gbagbo’s government has blamed the uprising on other countries – an accusation widely believed aimed at the Muslim nation of Burkina Faso, on Ivory Coast’s northern border. Ivory Coast previously has accused Burkina Faso of providing haven and support to armed Ivorian dissidents.
In Paris, Gbagbo representative Toussaint Alain called the insurgents ”pseudo-rebels” and ”dogs of war, mercenaries … paid by foreigners.”
In a region where civil wars often become multi-country affairs, spilling over porous borders, the accusations have raised fears of a wider conflict.
Fueling fears of an escalation, civilians in Bouake marched by the thousands in a show of support for coup forces on Sunday.
Burkina Faso has beefed security along its borders with hundreds of troops since Thursday’s uprising. Liberia, to the west, also has said it had reinforced its borders.
A French convoy rolled out of Abidjan, the commercial capital, late on Sunday, heading toward the capital, Yamoussoukro, 250 kilometres to the north.
A French military representative said the troops aimed to assure the security of French nationals and other internationals, trapped in Bouake, 100 kilometres further north. He did not give details of the size of the convoy, but said it was ”substantial.”
Earlier on Sunday, French transport helicopters and a reported 100 extra French troops landed in Abidjan, the commercial capital, reinforcing approximately 600 troops already based there.
French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has stressed the reinforced French presence is strictly a precautionary measure aimed at French citizens and other foreigners in Ivory Coast.
Among the half-million anxious residents of Bouake were around 100 American children, ranging in age from infants to 12-year-old school children, who attend a boarding school in the city. The children are the sons and daughters of missionaries working across West Africa.
The US Embassy said on Sunday it had no immediate evacuation plans for its nationals in Ivory Coast.
Since Friday, government convoys have been rolling north to Yamoussoukro, gearing up to retake the rebel enclaves to the north.
Loyalists claimed on Sunday to have surrounded Bouake. Military sources said government troops had approached cautiously to avoid detection and make sure their route was not mined. Only the desire to spare lives has staved off immediate attack, the sources said. The most serious threat to stability in the world’s largest cocoa producer since the 1999 coup, began before dawn on Thursday, when insurgents launched coordinated attacks on military installations, government sites, and Cabinet ministers’ houses in five cities and towns.
In Abidjan, a lagoon-side city of skyscrapers, well-stocked supermarkets and chic French restaurants, fighting in the first two days of the coup attempt scores dead on the government side, including a Cabinet minister and senior military officers.
One of the early casualties was the deposed junta chief and architect of the 1999 coup, General Robert Guei, shot by paramilitary police. Authorities say Guei masterminded the attempted coup ? a contention increasingly challenged by diplomats and rebels.
For decades, residents of Abidjan were unfamiliar with the night-time rattle of machine-gun fire that herald coup attempts. But since the shattering 1999 coup, ethnic, political and religious tensions have regularly exploded between the mainly Christian south and west and Muslim northerners.
While the French deployment stood to help Europeans, including an estimated 20 000 French, and the nation’s large Lebanese community, danger was greater for hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrant workers from surrounding countries.
In Abidjan, the Red Cross and other international organisations sought shelter for what it said were
3 871 people displaced by the coup violence.
Hundreds lost their homes on Friday and Saturday when paramilitary police burned a mostly Muslim shantytown near their base. – Sapa-AP