More bodies found as standoff persists

The United Nations said yesterday it had found more than 100 bodies in western Ivory Coast, as internationally-recognised President Alassane Ouattara enforced a blockade of his rival’s Abidjan residence.

Incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to cede power after a November election, was holed up in his bunker in the west African nation’s main city, surrounded by forces loyal to Mr Ouattara.

With bodies lying in the streets of Abidjan and shortages of food, water and medicine, aid organisations warned of a humanitarian crisis and foreigners queues to flee what was once one of the region’s most stable and prosperous nations.

The fresh evidence of massacres in the west, where Mr Ouattara’s forces swept through last week on their way to confront Mr Gbagbo in Abidjan, came after Mr Ouattara vowed to investigate reports that several hundred had been killed since he launched his assault.

“The human rights team investigating... in west Cote d’Ivoire found more than 100 bodies in the past 24 hours in three locations,” Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in Geneva.

“All the incidents appear to be ethnically motivated,” he said, while adding that “one has to be a little bit cautious of assigning responsibilities”.

Mr Ouattara promised in a televised address on Thursday that “light will be shed” on reports of massacres and other crimes.

“The authors of the crimes will be punished,” he said, calling on his troops “to be exemplary in their behaviour and to abstain from any crime, any violence against the population or any act of pillage.”

Several hundred people were reportedly massacred in the western town of Duekoue last week, with forces loyal to Mr Gbagbo and Mr Ouattara blaming each other and the International Criminal Court in The Hague announcing a formal probe.

In Abidjan, residents reported gunfire and explosions. Mr Gbagbo was still holding out in a bunker in the presidential residence after Mr Ouattara’s forces failed to remove him in an abortive assault on Wednesday. French forces later bombarded Mr Gbagbo’s positions in a bid to destroy heavy weaponry, and a Western source said the aim was “to hit a maximum of objectives in order to reduce the potential for resistance”.

“We have entered the post-Gbagbo era. The end is now in sight,” French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists in Paris.