Ivory Coast Leader Cornered After U.N. and France Strike
By ADAM NOSSITER
NYT
AXIM, Ghana — The United Nations and France went on the offensive Monday against Ivory Coast’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, striking targets at his residence, his offices and two of his military bases in a significant escalation of the international intervention into the political crisis engulfing the nation.
By early Tuesday, Mr. Gbagbo was in a bunker beneath his residence and was negotiating a possible surrender through the French ambassador, according to Alain Lobognon, a spokesman for the prime minister, Guillaume Soro. Forces supporting Mr. Gbagbo’s rival, Alassane Ouattara, were several hundred feet away.
The fighting was reported to have intensified in the hours before dawn on Tuesday with news reports and witnesses speaking of sustained machinegun and heavy weapons fire ringing out over the city, and residents pinned down in their homes.
France, which showed a newfound muscularity by championing military strikes against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces in Libya, on Monday attacked heavy artillery and armored vehicles at Mr. Gbagbo’s residence and presidential offices, two centers of his power, a French military spokesman said.
(More here.)
NYT
AXIM, Ghana — The United Nations and France went on the offensive Monday against Ivory Coast’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, striking targets at his residence, his offices and two of his military bases in a significant escalation of the international intervention into the political crisis engulfing the nation.
By early Tuesday, Mr. Gbagbo was in a bunker beneath his residence and was negotiating a possible surrender through the French ambassador, according to Alain Lobognon, a spokesman for the prime minister, Guillaume Soro. Forces supporting Mr. Gbagbo’s rival, Alassane Ouattara, were several hundred feet away.
The fighting was reported to have intensified in the hours before dawn on Tuesday with news reports and witnesses speaking of sustained machinegun and heavy weapons fire ringing out over the city, and residents pinned down in their homes.
France, which showed a newfound muscularity by championing military strikes against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces in Libya, on Monday attacked heavy artillery and armored vehicles at Mr. Gbagbo’s residence and presidential offices, two centers of his power, a French military spokesman said.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
The situation in the Ivory Coast is rather like that in the former Yugoslavia, which followed a similar cycle of political systems failing, rising violence with civilians often the victims and an international community for a long period only willing to take very limited steps in the face of a humanitarian disaster and likely war crimes.
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