ABIDJAN – At least 210 people have been killed in Ivory Coast since a presidential stand-off escalated in mid-December, the United Nations mission in the crisis-hit west African nation said on Thursday.
At least 31 people have died since the last toll given by the United Nations Mission in Ivory Coast (UNOCI) on December 30, the mission’s human rights spokesman Simon Munzu told journalists, bringing the total to 210.
The toll includes those killed during the crisis pitting incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo against the man the world says won a November 28 presidential run-off,
Alassane Ouattara, and ethnic unrest in the west of the country. Munzu said 14 had been killed in ethnic clashes in the western town of Duekoue since the start of the week. He said the clashes between members of the Guere and Malinke ethnic groups in the town around 500 kilometres (300 miles) west of the commercial capital Abidjan followed the death of a woman during a robbery. He declined to make a direct link with the presidential crisis in Abidjan, but said, “We feel that what happened in Duekoue is a reflection of the tendency towards intercommunal tension and violence.” Asked whether the unrest in the west amounted to the “genocide” that Ouattara’s camp has accused Gbagbo’s forces of carrying out against his supporters, Munzu said “we’re a long way from genocide.”
