Trainee police officers shot dead as many as three university students in Côte d’Ivoire on Thursday in a row that began after one of the trainees jumped the queue at a bus stop, student witnesses said.
Serges Koffi, leader of Ivorian student union Fesci, told Reuters some students had beaten up the trainee officer after he refused to wait in line for a bus on Monday and that his police colleagues had later attacked the campus to avenge the assault.
”The police took the first two [dead] away so we couldn’t identify them. It was the third one we identified. He is at Cocody morgue. He was a second year student in chemistry,” Koffi told Reuters by telephone.
Army sources said they were investigating the reported deaths.
Students blocked a number of roads for several hours and burned tyres in protest at the deaths in the plush Abidjan suburb of Cocody. Military police later intervened to restore order.
Koffi, whose organisation is notorious for political violence, said the trainees, whose police school lies several hundred metres from the university, had smashed up and looted the bedrooms of some students who live on campus. – Reuters