Côte d’Ivoire government forces on Friday resumed air strikes on former rebels while political violence targeting opposition parties in Abidjan raised fears of new civil strife.
Regional leaders prepared talks to cool the situation with African Union leaders calling a crisis meeting for Saturday, while United Nations agencies suspended relief work in response to fighting.
On Thursday, aircraft attacked strongholds of the ex-rebel New Forces (FN) at Bouake in the centre and Korhogo in the north, leading FN officials to describe a shaky peace pact in the west African country as ”defunct”.
Côte d’Ivoire has been split between loyalist south and rebel-held north since an attempted coup in September 2002 triggered a civil war.
The former colonial power France and the United Nations, which each have troops in the country, both made peace appeals.
In a call for a more robust UN role, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on French radio UN forces had halted a northbound column of government troops. But this was denied by a spokesperson for the Ivorian army.
France has deployed about 4 000 troops to patrol ceasefire lines alongside UN peacekeepers.
The UN said its relief agencies in Côte d’Ivoire had suspended work amid fears for the life of its staff.
Elisabeth Byrs of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Geneva its 700 UN staff were ordered to remain in their residences for security reasons.
”What worries us most is that staff might become targets for extremist groups,” she said.
The Ivorian military said Thursday’s raids — in which three people died and at least 40 were wounded — had achieved their objectives, destroying ex-rebel camps and strategic targets in Bouake and Korhogo, but it remained unknown exactly how many of the dead and injured were civilians.
The raids on Korhogo, close to the border with Burkina Faso and Mali, prompted Malian officials to step up security along their border.
Seven Malian nationals were wounded in bombing raids by government forces while traveling by car in the north, a Malian foreign ministry official said.
Overnight arson attacks on opposition party buildings in government-controlled Abidjan and belligerent language from both sides have added to tensions in Côte d’Ivoire.
Supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo ransacked the Abidjan offices of two main opposition parties on Thursday, also torching the offices of three pro-opposition newspapers.
Targeted were the Côte d’Ivoire Democratic Party, the country’s former ruling and now main opposition party, and the Rally for Republicans which is led by exiled former prime minister Alassane Ouattara.
The Paris-based journalists’ right group Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders or RSF) protested on Friday saying the raids had been ”a black day for freedom of expression in Côte d’Ivoire.”
The renewed violence has sparked fears that a 22-month-old French-brokered peace accord which brought former rebel leaders into a government of national unity could break down entirely.
Alliot-Marie said the political process had ”broken down for several months now. We’re trying to put pressure on both sides, because there is paralysis on either side and this situation benefits certain extremists who dream only of having it fall apart again”.
She criticised as inadequate the early response by the United Nations on the ground.
”The UN has reacted very badly to what has happened since yesterday,” she said. ”There are consultations, there is a condemnation and some thinking is being done, which should soon lead to decisions on the means and the legal framework of an intervention of UN forces with a more robust mandate.”
The UN should also ”exercise serious pressure on all protagonists … those who are carrying out atrocities in person [and] those undermining the political process”.
UN forces are patrolling the buffer zone between rebel-held areas in the north and centre, and the government-controlled south.
African Union chairman Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria was set to host a crisis meeting of regional leaders on Saturday.
From neighbouring Mali it was reported that Gbagbo has been refusing to take calls from African leaders since the air strikes began.
”I can tell you that several of his fellow leaders in the subregion have tried without success to speak to him by phone,” said an African diplomat in Bamako.
Electricity supplies in the north of Ivory Coast have been cut off since government air raids against positions held by former rebels began on Thursday, a spokesperson for them said.
Speaking by telephone, and claiming to be in the ex-rebels’ stronghold of Bouake, he said it was ”a deliberate political decision and a manipulation” by the authorities in Abidjan.
Northern Côte d’Ivoire gets power from electricity generated by hydroelectric plants in the south. – Sapa-AFP