Ivory Coast: Anti-Gbagbo forces take 3rd town in west
Ivory Coast’s internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara (2nd L) walks next to African Union Commission chief Jean Ping (L) after their meeting at the Golf Hotel in Abidjan on March 5, 2011. Ping was sent by a panel of five African heads of state tasked with finding a peaceful solution to the dispute in which both men claim to be president.
Rebels who back Alassane Ouattara as the elected leader of Ivory Coast say they took control of a third town from forces loyal to incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo over the weekend.
The rebels, who took two smaller towns in the west a week ago, announced on Sunday that they had captured Toulepleu.
A post-election standoff between Gbagbo and Ouattara — the U.N. says Ouattara won the November but Gbagbo has refused to step aside — has degenerated into urban warfare in the main city Abidjan. Northern rebels have pushed south in the heaviest fighting since they attempted toppling Gbagbo in a 2002-2003 civil war.
The fighting has led to the U.N. warning that the world's biggest cocoa-producing country risks slipping back into civil war.
About 50,000 refugees from Ivory Coast are known to have crossed into Liberia, where the United Nations refugee agency and the Liberian Commission on Refugees are struggling to cope with the influx, according to the BBC.
The fighting is taking place on the Liberian border, and there are reports of at least one shell falling on the Liberian side
"The rebels took Toulepleu yesterday after combat that lasted the whole day. There were not enough of us to contain them this time as we were hugely outnumbered," said Yao Yao, the chief of Gbagbo's Front for the Liberation of the Great West militia force, according to Reuters.
"We retreated to Bloequin, from where we are preparing a counter-offensive. The military reinforcements arrived yesterday."
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Monday expressed concern over the escalation of violence in Ivory Coast, which was driving tens of thousands of people out of the western African country.
"The situation in Ivory Coast carries the danger of a civil war and a refugee catastrophe with significant consequences for the entire region," Westerwelle said, according to DPA.
'We demand that [presidential incumbent] Laurent Gbagbo immediately ends all violence and hands power at once to the rightfully elected president Alassane Ouattara."
The BBC has this radio report.
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