Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo has ended the elections with a slight lead which will necessitate a run-off. The West African state has been the center of civil war and factional unrest for the last decade.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
AFP.
ABIDJAN. Gunmen shot dead at least eight people in an attack on Cote d’lvoire presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara’s followers as the wait for delayed results descended into bloodshed, witnesses said yesterday.
Violence erupted as Ouattara and President Laurent Gbagbo were locked in a stand-off over results of the hotly contested presidential vote, following pre-election violence that left at least another seven people dead.
Witnesses in the western Yopougon district of Abidjan, a stronghold of support for Gbagbo, said armed men attacked on Wednesday night at the office, a local base for Ouattara’s RDR party.
"People inside started yelling and the armed men started shooting," one witness said, without indicating the identity of the attackers.
AFP photographers saw blood, bullet holes and gun cartridges at the RDR base and several people with bullet wounds being treated at a nearby hospital. A hospital source said about 15 people were injured in the attack.
The military confirmed there was shooting in Yopougon on Wednesday night, but said an army patrol came under fire itself before shooting back, and gave a lower toll.
The patrol "was targeted by automatic gun fire . . . The patrol’s response killed four people and injured 14," the army said in a statement released yesterday afternoon. "Nine other people were arrested," it added.
A police source and an RDR official confirmed to AFP that at least eight people were killed. The RDR official said about 50 people were on the premises at the time, waiting for election results.
An official of Gbagbo’s FPI party, Lazare Zaba Zadi, told AFP meanwhile that two people were injured and a vehicle set alight in an attack on one of its offices nearby in Yopougon early yesterday.
The election, aimed at ending a decade of instability in the world’s top cocoa producer, stood in limbo after the deadline for results passed with no winner despite mounting international pressure for a resolution.
World powers pressured Ivorian leaders to resolve the stand-off over Sunday’s vote, marred by the violence and mutual allegations of cheating.
Election authorities said they were still working on provisional results as midnight passed. With this legal deadline gone it was not clear whether the Constitutional Council, the body authorised to confirm election results, would take charge of announcing the outcome.
The council is headed by a close ally of Gbagbo, Paul Yao N’Dre.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for the provisional results to be published "without further delay" and the UN Security Council ordered special consultations on the west African nation for yesterday.
Ouattara’s camp insisted results were ready and should be announced, accusing Gbagbo of trying to cling to power. The president's backers accused the opposition of fraud and urged that votes in several regions be scrapped.
The United Nations said the election was sound overall.
Troops were deployed around the main city of Abidjan and Gbagbo extended a curfew, in place since the eve of the election, until Sunday, but this did not prevent the deadly violence overnight.
In the pro-Ouattara stronghold of Bouake, a town in the rebel-controlled north of the country, hundreds of his supporters staged a demonstration on Thursday morning demanding results be released.
"We want results, we don’t want Gbagbo," they chanted, before ending the demonstration peacefully, an AFP reporter in Bouake said.
Some people burned tyres in the street in Bouake and put up barricades but these were removed at the demand of local leaders. The African Union, European Union, United States and former colonial ruler France have urged Ivorians to accept the outcome peacefully.
The election is intended to end years of crisis in the west African country, which was split in two when rebels of the New Forces took control of the north after a foiled coup against Gbagbo in 2002. — AFP.
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