ABIDJAN – Forces loyal to Ivory Coast’s presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara launched a major assault on the presidential palace on Tuesday, driving home their campaign to oust Laurent Gbagbo after U.N. and French helicopters left his military bases in flames.
In a sign his support was crumbling, Alcide Djedje, Gbagbo’s foreign minister, fled to the residence of the French ambassador in Abidjan, an Ivorian source said.
Sustained machinegun and heavy weapons fire rang out into the morning from the direction of the palace in the West African state’s commercial capital, in the heaviest fighting since soldiers backing Ouattara entered the city last week.
Gunfire and explosions were also heard near Gbagbo’s official residence in the leafy Abidjan neighbourhood of Cocody early on Tuesday, as well as in Adjame, where one of Gbagbo’s largest military bases is located, witnesses said.
“We spent the whole night locked in our house, on the floor with our hands covering our ears to block the sounds of the explosions,” Jacques Djoble, a resident of Cocody, said.
Residents of the central business district, near the palace, could be seen fleeing south away from its skyscrapers, across bridges over the palm-fringed lagoon. Some carried bags on their heads, others ran with plastic buckets.
The U.N. peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast, supported by the French military, targeted Gbagbo’s heavy weapons capabilities with attack helicopters after civilians were killed in shelling.
The state run RTI television station has been off air since Monday night, after most of its transmitters were destroyed.
Attacks centred on military bases in the city, but also on rocket launchers “very close” to Gbagbo’s Cocody residence, U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy told reporters late on Monday.
A spokesman for Ouattara’s government said late on Monday that his troops — which have been in the city since last Thursday — had since taken control of Gbagbo’s residence. A pro-Gbagbo military source denied the claim.
“Despite the bombardments, we are holding all of our positions, meaning the palace, the residence and all of our military bases,” the source said, asking not to be named.
Ouattara’s envoy to Paris said on Tuesday that he believed Gbagbo was in the process of negotiating his surrender, but a Gbagbo adviser also in Paris denied it. [ID:nLDE7340IU] “The rumour mill is going into overdrive but it looks like Gbagbo is trying to negotiate his way out. What he can offer is another matter. He is in the process of being militarily defeated so his negotiating position is much weaker than a couple of weeks ago,” said Hannah Koep, Ivory Coast analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks.
The fighting in the West African cocoa-growing nation pushed cocoa prices lower on Tuesday as dealers bet on a swift end to Gbagbo’s rule and a resumption of exports. The country’s defaulted $2.3 billion Eurobond rose as the assault raised expectations for repayment.
FINAL ASSAULT
In the north of Abidjan, bullet-riddled bodies lay by the side of the main motorway near the largely pro-Gbagbo neighbourhood of Yopougon, evidence of recent fighting between Ouattara and Gbagbo forces, a Reuters witness said.
An armoured personnel carrier was pushed across the roadway, still in flames, and residents who had emerged from their houses to find water said they had heard machinegun and heavy weapons fire through the night.
“We are afraid, but we are thirsty,” said Moussa, 19, a resident of Dogbe, who said had not had water in two days.
The United Nations human rights office in Geneva on Tuesday expressed concern over the killings of dozens of civilians in Abidjan, amid reports of heavy weapons used in populated areas.
Gbagbo has defied international pressure to give up the presidency after an election last November that U.N.-certified results showed Ouattara won, rejecting the results as fraudulent and accusing the United Nations of bias.
More than 1,500 people have died in the standoff that has rekindled the country’s 2001-3 civil war, though the real toll is likely much higher.
The French government, which has repeatedly called on Gbagbo to step down, said on Tuesday its role in the helicopter attacks on Gbagbo’s military was justified.
“It is the international community that has recognised Alassane Ouattara as the president elected by the Ivorian people and we are applying the democratic will of the people,” French government spokesman Francois Baroin told France 2 television.
Witnesses said there was also heavy fighting around the state broadcasting building, and that a key base for Gbagbo’s elite Republic Guard near the two main bridges connecting the lagoon-side city to the airport was on fire overnight.
Several thousand pro-Ouattara fighters had entered Abidjan from the north on Monday in a convoy of transporters, pick-ups mounted with machineguns, and 4x4s loaded with fighters bearing AK-47s and rocket launchers — in a “final assault”.
Their commanding officer, Issiaka “Wattao” Ouattara, told Reuters he had 4,000 men with him plus 5,000 already in Abidjan, and that it would take 48 hours to take control of the city.
Russia questioned the use of force by U.N. peacekeepers in Ivory Coast.
“We are studying the legal side of the situation, because the peacekeepers had a mandate which obliges them to be neutral and impartial,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow.
