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Ivorycoast rages { December 2 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2534109.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2534109.stm
Monday, 2 December, 2002, 15:39 GMT
Fighting rages in Ivory Coast
Government troops backed by mercenaries claim to have retaken the town of Man in western Ivory Coast from rebels.
"The fact that mopping-up operations have been launched (in Man) means that the situation is under control," an unnamed Ivorian military source told the French news agency, AFP.
Man and nearby Danane fell on Thursday to two previously unknown opposition groups who say they are not linked to the original rebel movement which sparked the anti-government revolt.
Thousands of refugees have fled the renewed fighting and headed for neighbouring Liberia, which itself has a long-standing rebellion.
A truce between the government and the main Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement (MPCI) rebel group had kept a relative peace for six weeks until last week.
French evacuation
A spokesman for the new rebels, Guillaume Gbatto, said they were "absolutely" in control of the town and the government soldiers were discarding their uniforms and fleeing, AFP reports.
"When the shooting dies down a bit, people take their things and try to leave, but the rebels shoot to tell them to go back inside," one Man resident told Associated Press.
An AFP journalist said that Man airport was in the hands of government troops on Monday morning.
The government forces launched their offensive on Sunday evening, just hours after French troops evacuated foreigners from the area.
French troops recaptured Man airport on Saturday and evacuated 40 French nationals and another 120 foreigners - half of them Lebanese - from Man and Danane.
It was the first time the French soldiers had been drawn into combat since being sent to protect French citizens and other foreigners in the former colony.
The intervention and evacuation - in which at least five guerrillas were killed - apparently angered the new rebel movements who call themselves the Movement for Justice and Peace and the Ivorian Popular Movement for the Great West.
French troops are still monitoring the truce further east.
Cell-phones
But residents fleeing Man said they were certain that the rebel groups there also included members of the MPCI and fighters from war-ravaged Liberia across the border.
One evacuee, Raj Angebat, told the BBC that the rebels were "going from house to house, taking cell phones, televisions, killing the dogs".
The MPCI has controlled the mainly Muslim north of Ivory Coast, but the attack on Toulepleu moved the front line further south.
The new rebels are from the Yacouba ethnic group and say they want to avenge the death of Ivory Coast's former military ruler General Robert Guei, who was killed on the first day of the uprising in September.
President Gbagbo has promised to end rebel control of all Ivorian areas and drive his opponents out of the country.
The UN refugee agency says there are 47,000 displaced people in the area now controlled or being fought for by the rebels, and a further 25,000 elsewhere in the country.
Ivory Coast used to be West Africa's richest country, but analysts fear that it could descend into the anarchy of the long civil wars in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
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