Ouattara ally calls for ‘rapid offensive’

A leading ally of the internationally recognised president of Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara, has called for a “rapid offensive” in the commercial capital, Abidjan, where pro-Ouattara fighters are battling forces loyal to the country’s incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo.

Guillaume Soro, Ouattara’s prime minister, said that fighters sent into the centre of Abidjan had reported a “generalised panic” among Gbagbo’s soldiers.

“The situation is now ripe for a rapid offensive… ” he told the TCI television station. “The operation will be rapid because we have discovered the exact number of operational tanks on the ground. Ivorians must trust in the Republican Forces [Ouattara’s army].”

Meanwhile on Monday, United Nations helicopters fired four missiles at a pro-Gbagbo military camp in Abidjan, witnesses said.

“We saw two UNOCI (UN mission in Ivory Coast) MI-24 helicopters fire missiles on the Akouedo military camp. There was a massive explosion and we can still see the smoke,” one of the witnesses said.

The camp is home to three battalions of the Ivorian army.

The spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping force, Hamadoun Touré, confirmed the attack. He specified that the attack is not against rebels but against “weapons used by Gbagbo against civilians and against UNOCI”.

Residents ‘on edge’

Ouattara’s forces have effectively cornered Gbagbo and his closest supporters after four days of fierce fighting.

Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa, reporting from Bassam, just outside Abidjan, said on Monday the people living in the area are “on edge” after hearing that an “all-out assault by Ouattara’s forces is imminent”.

“The disturbing thing is the checkpoints and barricades being manned by young men who are unemployed, some of them intoxicated, armed with machetes, [who] decide who goes in and out of Abidjan,” she said.

“So the residents are still living in fear. It is dangerous, however, despite a lull in the fighting; they are concerned about what the future may hold.”

But Gbagbo shows no signs of wavering, scoring a coup as his army chief of staff General Philippe Mangou seemed set to rejoin his side after seeking refuge in the South African ambassador’s residence earlier this week, the AFP news agency reported.

The RTI television station, a vital means of communication between Gbagbo and his loyalists, was briefly captured by pro-Ouattara fighters last week before Gbagbo troops regained control and restored the signal.

Messages on the station have urged civilians to form a “human shield” around Gbagbo’s residence.

‘Massacre denial’

Meanwhile, a first group of foreigners fleeing chaos was evacuated on Sunday as the French army took over the airport in Abidjan, wracked by the fighting.

After the French Licorne (Unicorn) force took control of the airport, Paris sent 300 more troops to the city as more than 1,500 foreigners sought refuge at a French military camp.

The French military said 167 foreigners, including French and Lebanese nationals, left Abidjan on Sunday for the Senegalese capital Dakar on a special flight.

Gerard Longuet, France’s defence minister, said evacuation of its 12,000 citizens in Ivory Coast was under consideration.

Paris has said it had begun assembling its citizens at three points in Abidjan a day after Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, called for French citizens to assemble together.

Meanwhile, France says it is sending another 150 troops to Abidjan, bringing its force there charged mainly with protecting foreigners to around 1,650, the military said on Monday.

The latest fighting follows an alleged massacre of hundreds of people in the small town of Duekoue in the west.

The United Nations mission in Ivory Coast [ONUCI] said on Saturday that traditional hunters known as Dozos had joined Ouattara’s forces in killing 330 people in Duekoue.

In a conversation late on Saturday with Ouattara, the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he was “concerned and alarmed” about reports that pro-Ouattara forces may have killed civilians.

Ouattara told him his forces were not involved in the Duekoue killings.

Ouattara’s government said in a statement that Dozos were not part of its forces and invited international human rights organisations to investigate the killings and rights violations.

“The government [Ouattara’s] notes with regret that the allegations of the deputy chief of ONUCI human rights division are not supported by any evidence after its preliminary investigation,” the statement read.

Toussaint Alain, Gbagbo’s spokesman in Paris, also denied his troops had played any role in the massacres.

A Catholic charity, Caritas, said up to 1,000 people had been killed by unknown attackers wielding machetes and guns. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) earlier estimated the death toll at around 800 people.

‘Mass slaughter’ 

It is not clear whether the 330 counted by ONUCI were included in the figures.

Alistair Dutton, the humanitarian director of Caritas, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that members of his organisation were on an investigating team, including UN officials and representatives of other NGOs, which travelled to Duekoue on Wednesday.

“There they found the aftermath of a mass slaughter of somewhere between 800 and 1,000 people who had been killed,” he said.

The team found bodies lying in the streets and the bushes, he said.

The victims appeared to have been civilians, Dutton said, who had been “caught up somehow between [the two] warring factions”.

Aid organisations say atrocities that could qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed by both sides.

According to Caritas, the killings occurred from Sunday 27 to Tuesday 29 March in the ‘Carrefour’ neighbourhood controlled by fighters loyal to Ouattara. It was not clear who the perpetrators were.

The UN says it is investigating the alleged mass killings. Hundreds of UN peacekeepers are based in the town.