[Al Jazeera] A series of kabooms and gunfire have rocked the main city of Abidjan that supports Ivorian presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara, with protesters calling on his rival to step down. At least three soldiers were killed in the festivities.And everyone was just so surprised!
The fighting had continued in Abobo, residents and the military said on Wednesday, while African presidents met with Ouattara on a trip aiming to end his violent post-election power struggle with incumbent Laurent Gbagbo.
Ouattara, keep in mind, is the guy who actually won the election...
| Is he the nominally Christian one, as opposed to his predecessor, who was nominally Muslim -- or have I got that backwards? |
It's looked that way since Laurent's flunky tore up the election results on national teevee...
A day earlier the delegation - the presidents of South Africa, Chad, Mauritania and Tanzania - met Gbagbo, who has
defied international sanctions and pressure to yield to the results of a November 28 poll that showed he lost to Ouattara.
"Nope. Nope. I ain't leavin' and youse can't make me!"
'Everyone is terrified'
The military that supports Gbagbo has crushed dissent in a series of bloody crackdowns, but military officials say they
have been provoked because some Ouattara supporters are armed.
"Since this morning, there has been constant shooting between the military and the people here," said Sephora Konate, an Abobo market trader, who added that she heard kabooms and machine gun fire.
Later in the night, the violence had calmed.
"Everyone is terrified. Children are crying but there's nothing we can say to comfort them," said Konate.
A commander at army headquarters who could not be named said three soldiers were confirmed killed in the festivities, but thought there were up to five dead. The military rarely gives civilian casualties, but previous clampdowns have left a trail of dead.
More than 300 people have been killed since the poll and the turmoil has driven cocoa futures to their highest level in more than three decades.
Cote d'Ivoire is the world's biggest cocoa producer, and a front man for Ouattara said he would extend the ban he had
ordered on cocoa exports to March 15.