ABIDJAN – Dozens of bodies littered the streets of an Abidjan
neighborhood on Tuesday as fighting continued between Ivory Coast troops and the
remnants of a militia loyal to deposed leader Laurent Gbagbo.
The clashes highlight the West African country's struggle to restore security
after a violent power struggle between Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara,
who won a November election and is now president.
"We have seen many dead. We recovered 40 bodies over two hours, but we were
forced to stop because he had no room left in our van," said Franck Kodjo, an
official at the International Committee of the Red Cross, adding at least five
corpses were from Tuesday's fighting.
The world's largest cocoa grower nation tipped toward civil war after Gbagbo
refused to cede power to Ouattara, triggering a conflict that killed thousands
and displaced more than a million people and only began to ease with Gbagbo's
arrest last month.
A commander for the Ivorian army, known as the FRCI, said the remaining
pro-Gbagbo fighters in the Abidjan neighborhood of Yopougon were mostly
Liberians who had crossed the border in the election dispute's aftermath as
soldiers for hire.
Efforts to disarm them have so far failed.
"We are in the process of securing the town but there are heavy weapons," the
commander said. "We're not the ones firing them, it is those we oppose, the
Liberians," he said.
Other parts of Ivory Coast's main city were coming back to life after the
conflict, with banks reopening and street traffic slowly returning to
normal.
Ivory Coast's main industry, the cocoa sector, is poised to resume export at
the end of this week of nearly a half a million tonnes of beans backed as a
result of the conflict, exporters said on Tuesday.
Ouattara's government is investigating Gbagbo and his inner circle for
alleged human rights abuses during the conflict as he used his military to cling
to power. Gbagbo, under house arrest in the country's north, called this week
for his supporters to allow the country to restart its economy in peace. Reuters
