Ivory Coast army retakes town
2002-12-11 11:13
Abidjan - Ivory Coast's mercenary-backed army has retaken a town in a western cocoa-growing region and begun pushing rebels back towards the Liberian border, military sources said on Wednesday.
President Laurent Gbagbo's forces advanced with tanks and helicopter gunships on Tuesday to retake the town of Blolekin, moving their positions some 65km forward on an important axis leading to the Liberian border.
"We are now pushing on from Blolekin," one military source said. Soldiers from former colonial power France confirmed that Blolekin had fallen to Gbagbo's forces.
In recent years, Blolekin has become an increasingly important region for cocoa growing in the world's biggest producer. It fell at the weekend to rebels of the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Far West.
The emergence last month of two rebel factions in western Ivory Coast has added to the confusion in a country that was already split in two by a separate rebellion that blew up from a failed coup on September 19.