Government helicopter gunships attacked a rebel-held Ivory Coast town, killing 20 civilians and injuring many others, a leader of the west African nation’s five-month insurgency charged on Sunday.
Sgt. Felix Doh, leader of a rebel faction in western Ivory Coast, declared the country’s oft-violated ceasefire dead in the wake of the alleged air assault on Saturday against Bin-Houye, a border town about 500 kilometres northwest of the
commercial capital, Abidjan.
Ivory Coast government officials confirmed fighting took place in the town, but said loyalist forces were attacked first by the rebels. ”Government forces were attacked and we reacted,” Toussaint Alain, a representative for President Laurent Gbagbo, told The Associated Press without elaborating. ”Each time we are attacked,
we will react with all means at our disposal.”
Alain declined to say whether the government was responsible for any civilian deaths, which could not be independently verified. The rebellion by three Ivorian factions arising from a failed September 19 coup attempt has divided the former French colony and world’s largest cocoa-producer into government and insurgent-held zones.
The warring sides are deadlocked over a France-brokered January 24 peace accord the rebels say gives them several key posts in a coalition government. Gbagbo has insisted he has the final say in awarding cabinet posts.
Some 3 000 French troops are monitoring a fragile cease-fire and protecting thousands of French civilians and other foreigners remaining in the country.
”Today, there is no cease-fire,” rebel leader Doh insisted on Sunday. Meanwhile, forces loyal to the government of neighboring Liberia battled on Sunday to retake a Liberian frontier town from fighters allegedly based in Ivory Coast.
Fighting has raged in Toe Town since what Liberia says was a cross-border incursion on Friday by Liberian mercenaries hired by Ivory Coast. Liberia’s defence minister said on Saturday the attack amounted to a declaration of war by the Ivory Coast.
Plainclothed militia fighting on behalf of Liberia’s government — which is battling its own three-year rebellion — raced on Sunday to join the fight at Toe Town, according to Liberian military radio monitored by The Associated Press in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. The fighting there sent about 2 500 refugees fleeing from Toe Town deep into Liberia’s interior, an official of the UN refugee agency, Moses Okello, said on Sunday in Monrovia. Toe Town, 250 kilometres east of Monrovia and less than 30 kilometres from the fighting in neighbouring Ivory Coast, is a major transit point for refugees — mainly immigrants — fleeing ethnic attacks in Ivory Coast’s civil war.
Ivory Coast has accused the governments of Liberia and Burkina Faso of sponsoring the Ivorian rebels with weapons and mercenaries. Both countries deny the charges. Humanitarian groups have independently reported attacks on villages in western Ivory Coast by groups of unidentified Liberian insurgents. Until Ivory Coast’s first coup in 1999 it was one of Africa’s most prosperous and stable nations.
Liberia has been wracked by conflict for more than a decade. The rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy has fought since 1999 to oust President Charles Taylor, a former warlord elected president after launching Liberia’s devastating 1989-1996 civil war. – Sapa-AP