I Coast: UN involved in fight

2004-10-12 10:27

Bouake - United Nations peacekeepers briefly opened fire in northern Ivory Coast to disperse a crowd of protesters threatening to burn a UN armoured vehicle, and rebel officials said three people were wounded in the violence.

Hundreds people were marching through the streets of this rebel-held city on Monday to protest the upcoming disarmament of rebel fighters, which is supposed to start on Friday.

The crowd converged on a UN base housing a contingent of Moroccan peacekeepers and began removing coils of barbed wire that had been laid around it. As a UN armoured vehicle drove past, the crowd surged toward it, prompting peacekeepers to fire at least two shots.

An Associated Press reporter on the scene saw one person wounded, who was taken to a hospital with a bullet wound.

Civilians wounded

A rebel spokesperson in Bouake, Affoussy Bamba, said peacekeepers fired to disperse the crowd and wounded three civilians.

Colonel Omar el Kadir, a UN military spokesperson in the commercial capital, Abidjan, confirmed that several people were wounded in the violence, but he said the Moroccan troops had fired into the air - not at the crowd.

"We don't know who has fired at who," he said, giving no more details.

Last week, about 1 000 demonstrators poured through Bouake in a similar protest, hurling rocks at UN peacekeepers deployed in the town, slightly wounding three and damaging a UN vehicle.

Rebels are popular in the town, and many people do not want to see them disarmed.

Ivory Coast has been split into a rebel-controlled north and a government-controlled south since insurgents seized half the country after a failed attempt to depose President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002.

Reform

A French-brokered peace deal, signed in January 2003, ended most of the violence and paved the way for a power-sharing government that handed ministerial posts to top rebel officials.

Disarmament was expected to begin last year, but has been delayed several times - as have political and legal reforms that were to have been passed by September.

The United Nations has deployed a peacekeeping force of 6 000 troops to Ivory Coast. They are here along with 4 000 French and 1 200 West African peacekeepers who, together, patrol the front lines.

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, was considered West Africa's most stable and economically advanced nation, but has been involved in civil strife since a coup in 1999.

- AP