U.N DISCOVERED 68 CORPES UNDER IVORY COAST FOOTBALL PITCH
UN investigators visit the site of an alleged mass grave in Yopougon district,Abidjan, Ivory Coast
SENEGAL, Ivory Coast - United Nations investigators in the Ivory Coast have discovered 68 decomposed bodies underneath a football pitch in former capital Abidjan.According to African football hub Kick-Off Magazine, the victims were most likely killed by forces loyal to ex-president Laurent Gbagbo (whose defaced campaign poster is pictured above). The bodies were discovered in a shallow grave in the centre of a football pitch in Yopougon, Abidjan.
The UN believes that the victims were killed on April 12, the day after rebel leader Gbagbo was arrested. UN spokesperon Hamadoun Touré confirmed the report to the Associated Press on Monday.- Eye witnesses have described the killings and said that they were forced by rebel forces to bury the victims in 10 different mass graves. The largest grave held 31 bodies.
- Ex-president Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to cede power after losing the November election led to a violent four-month crisis in the West African nation.
In addition to a death toll, one whichis believed to be in the thousands, thousands of lives have been lost and football activities within the country were suspended. However, the Ivorian Football Federation (FIF) last week that the Ivorian 2011 football season will finally begin on May 28.U.N AND FRENCH HIT IVORY COAST LAURENT GBAGBO'S STRONGHOLD
BOUAKÉ, Ivory Coast - French and United Nations helicopters fired missiles on Sunday at key positions held by forces loyal to the entrenched strongman Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan, the country's economic capital, partly destroying Mr. Gbagbo's residence, according to one of his top aides.
The United Nations said the attacks were part of its "neutralization" campaign against heavy weapons that Mr. Gbagbo has used against the civilian population. The presidential palace and Mr. Gbagbo's residence, where he has taken refuge, were targets on Sunday, a United Nations spokesman in Abidjan confirmed.- The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, suggested Sunday that Mr. Gbagbo's camp had fooled Western powers seeking his withdrawal by pretending to engage in surrender negotiations last week. "They in fact used that time to regroup their forces and redeploy heavy weapons," Mr. Ban said in a statement from New York.
Mr. Gbagbo then used those weapons against civilians and the United Nations headquarters in Abidjan, as well as the Hotel du Golf, the headquarters of Alassane Ouattara, who heads Ivory Coast's "legitimate government," Mr. Ban said in the statement.- Indeed, Mr. Gbagbo appeared to be gaining ground militarily, recapturing several strategic neighborhoods in central Abidjan and even lobbing shells at the residence of the French ambassador, spokesmen in Paris and New York said.
- The attacks on Sunday, though, could be a setback for Mr. Gbagbo, who has refused to leave office since losing an election in November. Reached by telephone, Désiré Tagro, Mr. Gbagbo's chief of staff, sounded shaken and angry after the helicopter attacks, saying that Mr. Gbagbo had been in the bedroom of his residence when they occurred and that the residence had been partly destroyed, with smoke rising from it.
A resident of the downtown Plateau neighborhood who watched the attack from his window said that French Gazelle combat helicopters had fired at least five missiles at Mr. Gbagbo's residence, and two at the presidential palace. Two United Nations Mi-24 helicopters also fired missiles at the palace, he said, and afterward he watched as a French Puma helicopter flew low over the central lagoon separating the palace from the Hotel du Golf and fired its 20-millimeter gun at Mr. Gbagbo's positions on the heights of the Cocody neighborhood, where the residence is located.- Mr. Gbagbo's renewed pugnacity, before Sunday's attack, appeared to make unlikely a quick resolution of the military confrontation between him and Mr. Ouattara that is ravaging Abidjan.
- A major strategic target, the state television station, was retaken last week by Mr. Gbagbo's forces -- providing once again an outlet for the nonstop campaign against the French and the United Nations that Mr. Gbagbo has waged so successfully.
Three days ago, after launching rocket-propelled grenades at the United Nations headquarters at the Sebroko Hotel, Mr. Gbagbo's armored personnel carriers, mounted with heavy machine guns, attacked civilians in the Adjamé and Attecoubé neighborhoods, which contain many Ouattara supporters, Mr. Ban said. Hundreds sought refuge at the United Nations headquarters.Then, on Saturday, Mr. Gbagbo's forces attacked the Hotel du Golf directly for the first time, "from several directions," Mr. Ban said in the statement. "These actions are unacceptable and cannot continue."
1,000 OR MORE KILLED IN IVORIAN TOWN
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Unknown attackers wielding machetes and guns killed more than 1,000 civilians in the neighborhood of an Ivory Coast town controlled by forces fighting to install the internationally recognized president, the Catholic charity Caritas told The Associated Press Saturday.The U.N. mission in Ivory Coast said it has a team investigating the alleged mass killings in western Duekoue. It said most of the nearly 1,000 peacekeepers based there were protecting about 15,000 refugees at a Catholic mission in the town at the time.
- Spokesman Patrick Nicholson of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas said workers visited Duekoue on Wednesday and found hundreds of bodies of civilians killed by bullets from small-arms fire and hacked to death with machetes.
They estimated more than 1,000 civilians were killed, he said. The International Federation of the Red Cross put the death toll at about 800, in separate and independent visits Thursday and Friday.- Nicholson, the Caritas spokesman, said the killings occurred over three days in a neighborhood controlled by fighters loyal to internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara, though it was not clear who the perpetrators were.
Previously, the United Nations put the death toll at 492 from four months of fighting. U.N. military spokesman Col. Chaib Rais said he had "no special report" of mass killings: "There was fighting two days before, on Sunday, and people were killed, but I cannot confirm those numbers." On Monday, fighters loyal to Ouattara said they seized Duekoue from Gbagbo forces.- The area has ben a hotbed for conflict between two rival tribes supporting Ouattara and Gbagbo, who refuses to accept his election defeat.
The International Organization of Migration said Friday that tens of thousands of refugees have overcrowded Duekoue and that others who had fled the violence there "are now stranded long the route, in fear for their lives."It said some of those slaughtered apparently were killed by "mercenaries" from nearby Liberia. Liberian mercenaries have been reported to be fighting for both Gbagbo and Ouattara.
The Roman Catholic bishop for the area, the Right Rev. Gaspard Beby Gneba of Man, said he was called by a priest from Guiglo, a town near Duekoue that also is sheltering refugees. He said the priest told him refugees were dying and that they were burying two people on Saturday. - Gneba said tensions in the area are a mixture of political, ethnic and land rivalry, aggravated by the influx of tens of thousands of new Ivorian refugees and long-established refugees from neighboring Liberia. In January, an unknown number of people were killed in violence in which some homes were torched and others looted, he said.
Gneba said more than 30,000 refugees had flooded the town of about 50,000 since January. Many are being sheltered at the Salesian priests' Mission of St. Theresa of the Baby Jesus. They are among more than 1 million people displaced by the violence since January.- Rais, the U.N. colonel, said there are nearly 400 peacekeepers based at Guiglo who were doing what they could to help with water and food.
Ouattara's government, in a general statement Friday responding to allegations of abuses by Amnesty International, blamed any killings on Gbagbo forces acting as they retreated. Ouattara had long tried to distance himself from the northern-based fighters taking up his cause who fought in a brief civil war almost a decade ago that left the country split in two.- Human Rights Watch issued a statement Saturday saying it had documented abuses, with the vast majority perpetrated by forces loyal to Gbagbo against real or perceived Ouattara supporters, as well as against West African immigrants and Muslims.
It was not immediately possible to reach Gbagbo or his ministers. But the New York-based organization said atrocities committed by pro-Ouattara forces risk amounting to war crimes, including three detainees burned alive and four whose throats were slit, all in Abidjan.
VISITORS GEOFLAGS SINCE AUGUST 26, 2009
