IVORY COAST: Ivorian army still patrolling Abobo as calm restored in Abidjan after clashes

Record ID: 181943

  • Title: IVORY COAST: Ivorian army still patrolling Abobo as calm restored in Abidjan after clashes
  • Date: 14th January 2011
  • Summary: MORE OF TRAFFIC AND PEOPLE ON ROAD
  • Embargoed: 29th January 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Cote d'Ivoire
  • Country: Ivory Coast
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVADLELVQEXB3450F28QFXMW6YT4
  • Story Text: Ivorian army still patrolling the streets in pro-Ouattara neighbourhood after overnight curfew, as relations between incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo and the U.N. mission deteriorate.
    Forces loyal to Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo eased a blockade on Thursday (January 13) around the scene of clashes between rival political camps in Abidjan after a night of calm under curfew, witnesses said.
    Six policemen were killed in the Abidjan suburb of Abobo on Wednesday (January 12) in a second day of fighting between security forces loyal to Gbagbo and supporters of rival presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara. Five people died on Tuesday (January 11).
    The West African country has been in crisis since a Nov. 28 presidential election that both Ouattara and Gbagbo claim to have won. Ouattara was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission and is widely regarded by foreign governments as having legitimately won the U.N.-certified poll.
    But Gbagbo has refused to step down, with backing from the top court, and still controls the security forces.
    Army chief of staff General Philippe Mangou announced a nightly 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in Abobo, and said troops in armoured vehicles would encircle the area.
    Early on Thursday he said he had blocked U.N. peacekeepers from entering.
    "Seeing people dying, from both sides, for us when people die it doesn't interest us if they are from the presidential side, or from the Golf Hotel side, really, when people dying it worries us a lot, so if there is a curfew it's a good thing," said Raphael Koudou, a man who lives in Abobo.
    Ouattara's parallel government, operating out of a hotel guarded by U.N. peacekeepers, said Gbagbo's forces had killed at least seven civilians in Wednesday's clashes.
    But residents heard no gunfire overnight and said the military had left on Thursday morning after a night of calm.
    "We don't like the curfew at Anyama, because we work in Abidjan and we finish a little late, around 1800, 1900 hours, so when we get home we are stuck, so we don't like it," said Raphael Kouame, who lives in the Anyama neighbourhood, next to Abobo.
    The election was meant to heal a nation divided into a government-held north and a rebel-run south by a 2002-3 war, but has instead seemed only to deepen those divisions, with the rebels falling in behind Ouattara, a northerner.
    Some analysts fear Gbagbo is playing for time after leaders from the ECOWAS regional bloc said they would remove him by force unless he stepped down without carrying out the threat as of yet.
    Ouattara has said in an earlier interview that Gbagbo was using the lull to get weapons to his supporters.
    Residents want an end to the uncertainty.
    "This situation of neither war nor peace doesn't suit the country. We need peace to return, the two sides to understand each other and to have peace in the country," said an Abobo pensioner, Jean Gouliani.
    The United Nations' top human rights official, Navi Pillay, said in December that she had written to Gbagbo and senior military officials warning them that they may be held criminally accountable for human rights violations in an effort to prevent what might lead to ethnic killings in Cote d'Ivoire.
    She said in Geneva on Thursday the UN was now discussing the urgency of military intervention.
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