"Seven UN peacekeepers are killed in Ivory Coast" by Germain Ndri | Associated Press, June 10, 2012
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Ivorian government forces will launch a military operation to hunt down the men responsible for an ambush that killed at least seven peacekeepers in an unprecedented attack on UN forces in the country. Officials said Saturday that at least eight civilians also were killed in the area.
Hundreds of villagers were fleeing the region near the Liberian border, though authorities were unable to confirm any additional casualties Saturday because of the remoteness of the area in southwestern Ivory Coast.
While Ivory Coast’s political crisis after the November
2010 election led to violence that left some 3,000 people dead, Friday’s
attack was a rare assault on the United Nations, which has had a
peacekeeping mission here since 2004.
An Ivorian Cabinet official who was briefed on the matter said President Alassane Ouattara requested helicopter gunships from the UN and expected them to arrive by Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Ivory Coast’s deputy defense minister Paul Koffi Koffi said government forces, along with Liberian and UN forces, will launch an operation on Friday to find the people responsible, whom he described as “militiamen or mercenaries.’’
I'll bet I'll see something in the Globe on Saturday.
Koffi Koffi said they could not respond sooner because it would take time to gather equipment and prepare the forces.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack, saying he was “saddened and outraged’’ about the deaths of the peacekeepers, all from Niger. He urged the government of Ivory Coast to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice....
This is starting to stink a bit, and the newspaper isn't going to freshen up things.
The ambush involved a large group of armed men, a UN official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The mayor of Tai, Desire Gnonkonte, said hundreds of villagers were fleeing the area.
Once a stable nation, the world’s largest cocoa producer was split into a rebel-controlled north and government-controlled south after an attempted coup sparked civil war in 2002.
A peace deal in March 2007 brought key rebel leaders into the administration and offered hope for a single government after years of foundering accords and disarmament plans.
But the country headed to the brink of civil war after a presidential runoff in early 2011 when then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat after losing to Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of the election.
Gbagbo was arrested with the help of UN and French forces in April 2011, and is now facing charges of war crimes at The Hague. Ouattara was sworn in as president soon after.
And then what was once daily coverage in my agenda-pusher soon dropped off the radar.
After Gbagbo’s arrest, many of the mercenaries and militiamen who fought for him fled across the porous border into Liberia’s forests, or clandestinely, into its refugee camps.
First I've seen of it.
--more--"
Related: World Court Whitewashes Ivory Coast War Crimes
Those of their own committed while installing their man.
