Ivorian soldiers' protest spreads to second town
Tue 25 Mar 2008, 11:17 GMT
By Loucoumane Coulibaly
ABIDJAN, March 25 (Reuters) - Protests by soldiers angered over the death of a colleague spread to a second town in Ivory Coast's violent west on Tuesday, as men in uniform shot rifles in the air and frightened residents cowered in their homes.
A dozen civilians were injured by falling bullets on Monday in the western cocoa and coffee trading town of Duekoue when soldiers on pickup trucks and mopeds cruised the streets firing in the air after robbers killed a comrade on Sunday night.
Duekoue fell calm by Tuesday morning, but soldiers in the nearby town of Guiglo joined the demonstrations late on Monday, apparently in sympathy with their colleagues, residents said.
"The soldiers have been shooting here all over town since yesterday evening. This morning they have started shooting again," local school teacher Isidore Tah told Reuters from Guiglo.
"There are soldiers in the street and on every junction. The town is dead -- nobody is going out," he said.
Duekoue and Guiglo lie on the southern edge of a buffer zone established between the rebel north and government-controlled south after a brief 2002-03 civil war.
The buffer zone was dismantled last year under a March 2007 peace accord, but the towns and the surrounding area, near to the border with Liberia, are the heartland of militias which backed the government during the civil war fighting.
Duekoue is a hotbed of ethnic tension between local people and immigrant farmers from further north, which was a key factor in triggering the war.
Thousands of pro-government militia fighters, as well as regular soldiers and northern rebels, are due to be disarmed under the peace deal, which aims to distribute identity documents ahead of elections due later this year.
Medical officials in Duekoue said they were forced to evacuate those most badly injured by falling bullets on Monday.
"By last night we had registered a total of 12 people injured by bullets, including two serious cases which were evacuated to Daloa," a surgeon in Duekoue said.
"There were sporadic gun shots this morning, but calm has now returned and there are a few cars driving around the town," he said. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit:
http://africa.reuters.com) (Writing by Alistair Thomson, editing by Mary Gabriel)
