Gbagbo’s supporters burn UN car as Ouattara denies role in violence

ABIDJAN, Thursday

At least one United Nations police vehicle was completely burnt in Cote d’Ivoire’s main city Abidjan today, a spokesman for the UN mission here said, with no casualties reported.

“I know at least one car has been burnt that I’m sure of. I’m waiting for information on others,” Kenneth Blackman told AFP.

The destroyed car was a four-wheel-drive belonging to the UN police mission in crisis-stricken Ivory Coast, an AFP photographer said, still smouldering in the eastern Riveria II district on Thursday afternoon.

Incumbent strongman Laurent Gbagbo has called on UN troops to leave the country and his supporters have been blocking movement of the troops.

Meanwhile, the government of Cote d’Ivoire’s internationally recognised president today rejected Gbagbo’s charges that his camp was behind deadly unrest in parts of Abidjan.

“We reject these accusations,” Alassane Ouattara’s government spokesman Patrick Achi said after army chief of staff General Philippe Mangou accused his camp of orchestrating attacks on Gbagbo’s Defence and Security Forces (FDS). “It’s the security forces who once more have sought to provoke the peaceful population. We will not respond to these provocations,” Achi told AFP.

Abidjan’s Abobo and Anyama districts, bastions of Ouattara, the man the world says won November’s presidential vote, were on Wednesday placed under nighttime curfew after two days of clashes in which at least 11 people died.

Gbagbo loyalist General Mangou appeared on state television late Wednesday to denounce attacks on his FDS that he said amounted to “acts of war.”

“Not a day goes by that the FDS... are not the main targets of hidden individuals answering the endless calls for civil disobedience, armed insurrection and murder of all sorts made by the politicians holed up in the Golf Hotel.”

Ouattara’s camp has been besieged by Gbagbo’s forces at Abidjan’s Golf Hotel resort, where they have for weeks been protected by United Nations peacekeepers and former rebels from the New Forces.

At least 200 people have died in the stand-off pitting Gbagbo against Ouattara. The international community has demanded that incumbent Gbagbo stand down or face regional military intervention.

“What would be the interest for Ouattara’s camp?” said Mr Achi. “We don’t have anything against the people, or the security forces.

‘‘We simply want the outgoing president to leave power peacefully.” Mr Achi said those behind reported rocket-propelled grenade attacks on FDS in Abobo could be renegade pro-Gbagbo militias, or member of the FDS “who say they are disgusted” and “want to help and support the civilian population.”

“Anything is possible, but it’s nothing to do with us,” he said.

Gen Mangou has said the curfew would be used to “seek and flush out everybody behind these attacks,” threatening to extend the curfew to other Abidjan neighbourhoods.

Today, parts of Abidjan were under a curfew imposed by Gbagbo today, in districts loyal to his rival for the presidency, where at least 11 people have died in recent unrest.

“The districts of Abobo and Anyama are under curfew” from 7 pm to 6 am until Saturday, said a decree read out on state television.

The northern districts are home to many supporters of Ouattara, who the international community says beat incumbent Gbagbo in a November 28 presidential run-off.

At least eight police and three civilians have been killed in Abobo, which neighbours Anyama, after hundreds of Gbagbo’s Defence and Security Forces (FDS) swooped on the neighbourhood before dawn on Tuesday.

Eight security forces have died, according to Gbagbo’s interior ministry, while an AFP journalist saw the bodies of three dead civilians, with an end to the escalating crisis nowhere in sight. (AFP)