United Nations staff in western Ivory Coast have found more than 100 bodies in the past 24 hours, some burned alive and others thrown down a well, the latest evidence of ethnic bloodshed gripping the country. The discovery came a week after the International Committee of the Red Cross said at least 800 bodies had been found in the town of Duekoue after an explosion violence between communities.
United Nations human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said on Friday that UN workers had found 15 more bodies in Duekoue, where the burnings took place, and had discovered more than 63 in Guiglo and 40 in Blolequin - all on Thursday. He said it was hard to say who was responsible as long-running ethnic tensions in the region have grown alongside fighting between forces loyal to presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara and those of his rival Laurent Gbagbo.
However, he said the victims in Duekoue appeared to be from the Guere ethnic group supporting Gbagbo, and that the killings took place when fighters loyal to Ouattara took control of the town in their advance towards the south. "With these very ugly tit-for-tat killings in Duekoue ... (and) 100 more bodies found just yesterday, you're talking about quite an escalation," he told a news briefing in Geneva. "Some of the victims seem to have been burnt alive, and some corpses were thrown down a well," he said, adding that the murders appeared to have been in retaliation for the mid-March killing of 100 people by pro-Gbagbo forces in the same town.
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