Five soldiers killed in attack on army camp in Ivory Coast

By ANGE ABOA in ABIDJAN
Published on 07/08/2012 00:00

Gunmen killed five soldiers and seized weapons during a pre-dawn raid on an army camp in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital Abidjan yesterday, heightening fears of renewed instability in the country.

The West African state – where five soldiers were killed in a similar attack on a police station and army roadblock in the city the previous day– is emerging from years of political turmoil, but remains awash with illegal weapons.

A group of heavily armed men in civilian clothes stormed the army camp in the Akouedo neighbourhood, on the eastern edge of the city, at around 3:30am local time, an officer present at the base said.

Fighting lasted nearly three hours before the army took back control of the area.

Colonel Cherif Moussa, the Ivorian army’s deputy chief of staff, said: “They attacked the two entrances to the camp simultaneously and opened fire. We’ve counted five dead on our side and one among the assailants.”

Witnesses reported seeing the bodies of four soldiers who had been shot in an office just inside the camp entrance. Another lay on the ground outside, apparently beaten to death. Others were wounded in the gun battle, though officials did not immediately say how many.

Dozens of government soldiers and five armoured vehicles carrying peacekeepers from Ivory Coast’s United Nations mission, UNOCI, were positioned near the entrances to the compound yesterday morning. Bullet holes covered the camp’s exterior walls.

“There were many of them and they attacked the camp from all sides,” Corporal Ousmane Kone, who took part in the fighting, said. “They took lots of weapons, loaded them in a truck and drove off with them. They took AK-47s, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.”

Heavily armed soldiers patrolled the streets in Abidjan’s eastern neighbourhoods in the late morning. Shops in the area closed their doors and few vehicles were seen on the streets.

The West African nation has sought to re-establish normality after a decade of political deadlock and civil unrest that ended with a brief civil war in 2011 that killed about 3,000 people.

The conflict erupted after then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to admit defeat to rival Alassane Ouattara in a 2010 election. Gbagbo, who was captured during the fighting, is now awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague on war crimes charges.

While Mr Ouattara, now president, has improved security in most of the country, efforts to remove from circulation thousands of weapons left over from the conflict have faltered and sporadic violence persists.

There has been an escalation in armed attacks, mainly in the country’s cocoa-rich west, long the scene of ethnic violence and disputes over land ownership.

At least five soldiers were killed when gunmen fired on a police station and army roadblock on Sunday in Abidjan’s Yopougon neighbourhood, a former Gbagbo bastion.

More than 20 people, including seven UN peacekeepers, were killed in raids along the Liberian border in June in what Ivorian authorities said were cross-border incursions by pro-Gbagbo militias and Liberian mercenaries.