Côte d’Ivoire security forces have arrested 11 members of a leading opposition party in an alleged plot to assassinate top government figures, the government and the opposition party said on Tuesday.
The roundup of followers of former prime minister Allasane Ouattara, a key opposition leader who fled into exile as civil war engulfed Côte d’Ivoire last year, is the latest in weeks of arrests in alleged coup and assassination plots in the still-divided, still-turbulent West African hub.
Despite an officially declared end to the civil war in July, Côte d’Ivoire remains split between the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south. Northern rebels are boycotting a power-sharing government that was part of the peace accord, accusing President Laurent Gbagbo of failing to stick to terms of the deal.
The government announced the arrests late on Monday, saying 11 members of Ouattara’s Rally of the Republicans had been detained for questioning in what it called a plot to kill ”high political, political, administrative and military personalities”.
The government gave no other details, beyond saying all detainees are ”in good health”.
Ouattara’s party, which has its base of support among northerners, said those arrested were mid-level members.
”The presidential camp wants to demonise the RDR. We’re remaining vigilant,” party spokesperson Cisse Bacongo said, using the acronym for Ouattara’s party.
It was unclear if the government was alleging a new assassination plot, or whether the arrests were the latest in dozens of detentions following the discovery in August of an alleged plot to kill Gbagbo by attacking his motorcade with rocket
launchers.
Camouflage-clad government security forces in bulletproof vests moved early on Tuesday into the streets of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s government-held commercial capital, on guard with tensions rising yet again.
Côte d’Ivoire, a former French colony, is the world’s largest cocoa producer and a key port and economic centre for West Africa.
Until a first-ever 1999 coup here, it had been one of the region’s most stable and most prosperous countries.
Ouattara — prime minister in the early 1990s, and a longtime political foe of Gbagbo — fled to France shortly after a failed September 2002 coup attempt against Gbagbo touched off the civil war.
A January France-brokered peace accord stopped most fighting.
A 4 000-strong French force is working with about 1 200 regional troops to help keep guns quiet along front lines. — Sapa-AP