Ivory Coast’s democratically elected leader said his forces will starve out the entrenched strongman who remains holed up underground at the presidential residence and that he’ll focus on normalizing life in this corpse-strewn, terrorized city. As the political stalemate dragged on in Abidjan, there were new concerns about tensions erupting into deadly violence in the country’s west. The U.N. said more than 100 bodies have been found, and said some of the victims had been burned alive.
“All the incidents appear at least partly ethnically motivated,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
The International Rescue Committee is warning that chaos is permeating this West African nation once split in two by a 2002-2003 civil war, citing an “explosive mix of political, economic and ethnic tension. We’re concerned that looting, hostility, bloodshed, reprisal killings and sexual assaults will escalate in communities across the country,” said Louis Falcy, the IRC’s country director in Ivory Coast.
Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of November elections, said on TV late Thursday that his forces are setting up a security perimeter around the presidential compound where Gbagbo, who insists he won the elections, is staying with his family. The goal, Ouattara said, is to wait for Gbagbo to run out of food and water.
By any means necessary…
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