UN under pressure as Ivory Coast on edge of civil war

ABIDJAN—The United Nations came under pressure Friday to ban the use of heavy weapons in Ivory Coast amid heightened concern for the safety of civilians caught up in a bloody post-election stand-off.

The UN Security Council met Friday to discuss a draft resolution introduced by France and Nigeria on a weapons ban in Abidjan, as Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to cede power to internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

Fighting with heavy weapons raged in two northern suburbs of Abidjan on Friday near a military barracks where pro-Gbagbo forces said they had repulsed an attack by rebels backing Ouattara.

"Rebels attacked our positions with heavy weapons," said a source inside FDS troops loyal to Gbagbo of the fighting in the Anyama district. "We repulsed them and they fled to neighbouring villages."

There was no independent confirmation of this.

In neighboring Abobo a resident reported heavy gunfire. "We are hiding at home," he said. Two other residents said they had seen FDS tanks.

"Law and order is collapsing, humanitarian access is more and more difficult, hospitals are closing — we are very, very close to a civil war in Abidjan," France's ambassador to the United Nations, Gerard Araud, said in New York Friday.

The draft resolution demands an end to attacks against the UN mission and civilian populations by the Gbagbo camp and calls for UNOCI to protect civilians, according to one diplomat.

"It's saying first, 'Gbagbo has to leave.' The second point is to stop the violence against the civilians," Araud said.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), in an open letter to the Security Council, warned of ethnic cleansing and mass atrocities if the UN peacekeeping mission UNOCI was not strengthened, saying "civil war in the country has been reignited".

As many as one million people have fled their homes as civilian areas are bombarded daily with rockets, mortars and shells.

Clashes between forces backing the two rivals killed 52 people in the past week, the UN estimates, with the total death toll reaching at least 462.

An attack by Gbagbo troops on a market, which killed up to 30 civilians last week in the Ouattara stronghold of Abobo, has led to widespread condemnation.

West African leaders on Thursday called on the UN Security Council to reinforce the mandate of the 10,000-strong UNOCI force.

The ICG think-tank warned the UN's reputation was at stake.

"The UN's posture in the country must change, and UNOCI must be required to use force when necessary to carry out its mandate effectively," it said.

"Gbagbo’s regime is intentionally driving the country to chaos," it added. "Gbagbo-controlled media broadcast hate speech and incite violence."

The UN refugee agency's estimates of the number of displaced nearly doubled in the past week, with spokeswoman Melissa Fleming reporting up to a million having fled the economic capital Abidjan alone — home to five million people.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned the crisis had a severe impact on access to healthcare, with a severe lack of medicines as medical personnel fled their posts in conflict zones.

UN refugee agency spokesman in Abidjan Jacques Franquin told AFP hundreds of Liberian "mercenaries" were taking advantage of the clashes in the western region of Guiglo.

"They are neither pro-Gbagbo nor pro-Ouattara, they are merely profiting from the situation. They loot, they rape, they kill," said Franquin, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Abidjan.

"Guiglo is in a lawless zone, there is no functioning police, everyone does what they want."

Franquin described an attack on an UNCHR warehouse and office, in which vehicles, motorbikes, office furniture and computers were stolen.

"There are about 20,000 displaced in Duekoue and tens of thousands in Guiglo. In the latter, between 500 and 1,000 people gathered in front of the UNOCI base to seek protection," added Franquin.

Meanwhile the UN human rights office is looking into allegations that about 200 people, nationals of the west African regional bloc ECOWAS -- from Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Senegal and Togo — have been killed around the town of Guiglo.

On the political front, allies of Gbagbo on Friday rejected the idea of a stronger UNOCI mandate, saying mediated talks were the only way out of the crisis.

"It is necessary to stop the violence, it is through dialogue that we can do this. Force will not solve the problem, it is a dead-end," said Ahoua Don Mello, spokesman for Gbagbo's outgoing government.

The November 28 presidential run-off vote was supposed to end a decade of political turmoil which divided the world's top cocoa producer into a rebel-held north and Gbagbo-controlled south after a failed coup in 2002. (report from Fran Blandy, Agence France-Presse)