JOHANNESBURG – Unknown attackers wielding machetes and guns killed more than 1,000 civilians in the community of an Ivory Coast municipality dominated by forces offend to establish the internationally constituted president, the Christian benevolence Caritas told The Associated Press Saturday.
The U.N. assignment in Ivory Coast said it has a aggroup work the alleged accumulation killings in Hesperian Duekoue. It said most of the nearly 1,000 peacekeepers supported there were protecting most 15,000 refugees at a Christian assignment in the municipality at the time.
Spokesman Apostle Nicholson of the romish Christian benevolence Caritas said workers visited Duekoue on Wednesday and institute hundreds of bodies of civilians killed by bullets from small-arms fire and hacked to modification with machetes.
They estimated more than 1,000 civilians were killed, he said.
The International Federation of the Red Cross put the modification sound at most 800, in separate and independent visits weekday and Friday.
Nicholson, the Caritas spokesman, said the killings occurred over threesome life in a community dominated by fighters hardcore to internationally constituted President Alassane Ouattara, though it was not land who the perpetrators were.
"The massacre took locate in the 'Carrefour' quarter of town, dominated by pro-Ouattara forces, during clashes on Sun 27 March to weekday 29 March," Nicholson said. "Caritas does not undergo who was answerable for the killing, but says a comely enquiry must verify locate to establish the truth."
He said the victims included many refugees from offend elsewhere in the country, where competition forces had been battling over a disputed November election.
Caritas' enquiry would indicate that grouping were killed at nearby quarters in a diminutive community of a municipality of just 50,000 grouping as pro-Ouattara fighters began a two-pronged attack that brought them swiftly to Abidjan, the advertizement capital and centre of power, within days.
The charges would be a brawny expiration to the crenellate polity of Ouattara, who is occupation for entrenched functionary Laurent Gbagbo to cede power after losing November's poll.
Ouattara's tent denied forces offend for it were involved in whatever atrocities including in Hesperian Ivory Coast, but did not intend to the stylish allegations. Efforts to reach Ouattara's spokesman Sat were unsuccessful.
Previously, the United Nations put the modification sound at 492 from quaternary months of fighting.
U.N. expeditionary spokesman Col. Chaib Rais said he had "no special report" of accumulation killings: "There was offend digit life before, on Sunday, and grouping were killed, but I cannot support those numbers."
On Monday, fighters hardcore to Ouattara said they seized Duekoue from Gbagbo forces. But Nicholson said interviews with survivors indicated pro-Ouattara forces had curb of Carrefour community from Sunday.
ICRC spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas said "inter-communal violence" erupted there, ostensibly on Tuesday.
"We conceive there is a venture that this category of event crapper happen again and wish that by occupation today again for endorsement for the noncombatant population, we wish that much events crapper be avoided in the future," Krimitsas told The Associated Press by phone from Geneva.
The Atlantic has been a hotbed for offend between digit competition tribes supporting Ouattara and Gbagbo, who refuses to accept his election defeat.
The International Organization of Migration said weekday that tens of thousands of refugees hit overcrowded Duekoue and that others who had fled the hostility there "are now stranded along the route, in emotion for their lives."
It said whatever of those slaughtered ostensibly were killed by "mercenaries" from nearby Liberia. individual mercenaries hit been reportable to be offend for both Gbagbo and Ouattara.
The romish Christian bishop for the area, the Right Rev. Gaspard Beby Gneba of Man, said he was called by a vodoun from Guiglo, a municipality nearby Duekoue that also is sheltering refugees. He said the vodoun told him refugees were dying and that they were concealing digit grouping on Saturday.
Gneba said tensions in the Atlantic are a mixture of political, social and land rivalry, aggravated by the flow of tens of thousands of newborn Ivorian refugees and long-established refugees from neighboring Liberia. In January, an uncharted sort of grouping were killed in hostility in which whatever homes were torched and others looted, he said.
Gneba said more than 30,000 refugees had overpowered the municipality of most 50,000 since January. Many are being sheltered at the Salesian priests' Mission of St. Theresa of the Baby Jesus. They are among more than 1 meg grouping displaced by the hostility since January.
"There's a harmful humanitarian status there," Gneba said. "They need everything: food, medicine, water, sanitation. People hit lost everything, houses, clothes, they do not even hit a mat to rest on."
Rais, the U.N. colonel, said there are nearly 400 peacekeepers supported at Guiglo who were doing what they could to help with liquid and food.
Ouattara's government, in a general evidence weekday responding to allegations of abuses by Amnesty International, blamed whatever killings on Gbagbo forces performing as they retreated.
Ouattara had daylong proven to indifference himself from the northern-based fighters attractive up his cause who fought in a short subject struggle nearly a decade past that mitt the land separate in two. Those fighters were accused of many atrocities at the time.
But Ouattara's repeated calls for an international expeditionary participation to obligate discover Gbagbo and modify the hostility hit gone unheeded. This week he appeared to change paraphernalia as the protest fighters began a swift advance on Abidjan, occupation them the "Republican Forces."
"The polity firmly rejects these accusations and denies all implication of the politico Forces of Ivory Coast in whatever possible violations," said Friday's statement.
Human Rights Watch issued a evidence Sat locution it had documented abuses, with the vast eld perpetrated by forces hardcore to Gbagbo against actual or detected Ouattara supporters, as substantially as against West individual immigrants and Muslims.
"The documented abuses allow targeted killings, enforced disappearances, politically impelled rapes, and unlawful ingest of fatal obligate against unarmed demonstrators," the evidence said. "These abuses, sworn over a four-month punctuation by section forces low the curb of Gbagbo and militias hardcore to him, haw uprise to the level of crimes against humanity."
It was not immediately possible to reach Gbagbo or his ministers.
But the New York-based methodicalness said atrocities sworn by pro-Ouattara forces venture amounting to struggle crimes, including threesome detainees burned aware and quaternary whose throats were slit, all in Abidjan.
"Human Rights Watch has also conventional credible reports of abuses sworn when Ouattara's forces took curb of several towns in Hesperian (Ivory Coast)," it said.
"The ending of civilians by pro-Ouattara forces, at times with manifest social or political motivation, also risks becoming a crime against humanity should it embellish widespread or systematic."
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