UN confirms strike against heavy weapons in Ivory Coast

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UN confirms strike against " heavy weapons " in Ivory Coast

Apr 5, 2011, 7:17 GMT

Abidjan - United Nations head Ban Ki-moon has confirmed that peacekeepers,

backed by French forces, used helicopters to target heavy weapons wielded by

forces loyal to embattled Ivory Coast President t Gbagbo.

A dpa correspondent in Abidjan said that fighting had died down early Tuesday,

although there was still sporadic artillery fire coming from near the

presidential palace.

The former French colony has descended into a full civil war as rebel forces

looking to oust Gbagbo have entered Abidjan and are attempting to dislodge the

hardcore remnants of the president's forces.

'In the past few days, forces loyal to Mr. Gbagbo have intensified and escalated

their use of heavy weapons such as mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy

machine guns against the civilian population in Abidjan,' Ban said, adding that

Gbagbo's troops had also launched similar attacks on the UN headquarters.

'In this regard, UNOCI (the peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast undertook a

military operation to prevent the use of heavy weapons which threaten the

civilian population of Abidjan,'he added.

Hamadoun Toure, UNOCI's spokesman in Abdijan, said that rockets fired from

helicopters targeted heavy weaponry at a military base and near the presidential

palace.

'Before I ran and hid under my bed, I saw a fireball and black smoke in the

sky,' a woman who lives near the Akouedo military base told the German Press

Agency dpa.

The rebel forces who back Gbagbo's rival Alassane Ouattara began a final push on

Monday night. The thump of heavy artillery reverberated around the city and

smoke drifted over rooftops as battle raged, witnesses said.

Gbagbo's forces are defending the presidential palace, state-controlled

television RTI and other key locations. On Monday night, a spokesperson for

Ouattara told dpa that the rebel forces had seized the president's residence.

Gbagbo's whereabouts were unknown.

Gbagbo has ignored calls to step down since November's elections, in which

international observers say Ouattara was elected president. Serious military

action by the rebel forces backing Ouattara only got under way in recent weeks

after mediation efforts and sanctions failed to budge Gbagbo.

The Republican Forces of Cote D'Ivoire (FRCI), comprised of northern rebels, New

Forces and other armed groups, easily overran Yamoussoukro, the nation's

political capital, and the city of San Pedro, the world's largest

cocoa-exporting port.

Ouattara's advancing rebel forces are suspected of involvement in a massacre in

the western town of Duekoue, where Catholic charity Caritas says up to 1,000

died during the course of last week.

The November poll had been supposed to consign to history the ghost of the civil

war that broke out in 2002 and divided the country into the rebel, mainly Muslim

north and Christian south.