Five people were killed and hundreds of United Nations peacekeepers forced to abandon their base as anti-UN protests swept government-held southern Côte d’Ivoire for a third straight day. After repeated attacks on UN compounds, vehicles and offices, a UN official said civilian personnel were being concentrated in central locations.
As protesters loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo took over state television and broadcast calls for mass anti-UN demonstrations in the street, Nigerian and African Union President Olusegun Obasanjo flew in to help defuse the sudden crisis.
The main city, Abidjan, was paralysed for the third straight day by roadblocks thrown up by angry youths loyal to Gbagbo.
Côte d’Ivoire split into two more than three years ago, and 10 000 UN and French troops monitor the buffer zone between the government’s south and the rebel-controlled north. In the volatile western region near the Liberian border, hundreds of blue-helmets based in Guiglo and Duekoue were forced to retreat after protesters invaded compounds and torched UN buildings bearing the distinctive blue flag.
In Guiglo, 350km from Abidjan, Bangladeshi soldiers opened fire to repel youths who besieged their barracks overnight. Hours later, the 200 to 300 men redeployed, taking UN civilian personnel with them.
At the local hospital, a doctor who declined to be named said (over the telephone) that five people were killed and 10 injured from gunshot wounds.
”There was an exchange of gunfire,” said UN military spokesperson Gilles Combarieu, who confirmed that UN troops had decamped to the nearby buffer zone.
Youths loyal to Gbagbo, and who belong to a movement known as the Young Patriots, have been targeting UN facilities since international mediators overseeing a UN peace blueprint backed measures that effectively reduced Gbagbo’s powers.
On Sunday, mediators in the ministerial-level International Working Group (IWG) said Parliament, which is packed with Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party members, does not have a mandate.
Parliament’s mandate expired on December 16 and the IWG recommended the mandate not be renewed, effectively disbanding the assembly.
Gbagbo’s ruling FPI on Tuesday announced, in protest, that it was quitting the peace process and pulling out its seven members in a transitional government headed by Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny.
A spokesperson for the New Forces rebel movement, Sidiki Konate, meanwhile warned that the country was on the edge of war and said the UN withdrawal from Guiglo and Duekoue meant local populations had been left with no protection. ”We are left on the brink of civil war!” he said. ”This is not just about UN soldiers. This is about the lives of millions of Ivorians that the UN is supposed to be protecting.”
In Abidjan, makeshift barricades manned by young men brought activity to a standstill. While the number of Young Patriots roaming the streets was lower than during widely supported 2004 anti-French riots, all businesses were closed and most residents stayed at home.
At a hillside hotel transformed into UN headquarters, UN troops fired tear gas and live bullets at over 1 000 protesters. Nearly 500 youths simultaneously gathered outside the French military base. Young Patriots also massed outside the French Embassy in the lagoon-side business district of Plateau, Abidjan, blocking exits.
”We and our friends have been in front of the French Embassy for the past three days, because France has been hiding behind the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire,” said Young Patriots leader Charles Ble Goude in a statement read out on Ivorian radio. ”France provided arms and organised this internal war, which is bereaving our country.”
The group was especially vocal against France in violence in November 2004 when thousands of French nationals had to be evacuated from the country.