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| East/Subsaharan Africa |
| Ivory Coast Rebels Claim Gov’t Attack |
| 2003-05-06 |
| EFL Ivory Coast's insurgents said government fighters attacked them on Monday, a day after a nationwide cease-fire took effect. That didn't take long Rebel spokesman Antoine Beugre said government troops and foreign mercenaries attacked rebel positions in the villages of Zeale and Teapleu, near the country's western border with Liberia. Ivory Coast army spokesman Lt. Col. N'Goran Aka was unaware of any fighting, saying only: ``We've held those towns for a long time, so if there's fighting there, they must be attacking us.'' Give N'Goran a promotion for that one. Rebel allegations couldn't be independently verified from the towns, which are in lawless borderlands that have seen shifting battle lines. The cease-fire accord, signed by rebel and army officials, took effect Sunday even as the sides traded charges of instigating fighting that continued until just before the midnight deadline. Beugre said the Liberian fighters, who have taken up arms with both rebel and loyalist forces in western Ivory Coast, have been cleared out of rebel-held zones. The government contends that renegade fighters still roam the lawless frontier. Officials have said that a joint military operation - including troops from government and rebel ranks as well as soldiers from the French army and a West African peacekeeping force - will soon be deployed to western Ivory Coast to enforce the cease-fire. Too many different factions for it to work |
| Posted by:Steve |