ABIDJAN, Nov 20 (AFP) - A businessman has been murdered in Ivory Coast's
main city Abidjan, where there have been a number of assassinations since
the start of a rebellion in September, the local press reported on
Wednesday.
The daily Le Jour said that according to eyewitnesses Tiegbe Zoumana
Ouattara, the owner of a transport business, was shot dead by men in
camouflage uniforms near his home just after midnight on Monday.
The family refused to answer a knock on the door, the newspaper said,
and after a child noticed that the men were dressed in camouflage Ouattara
jumped over the back wall to his property and tried to run away.
He was too slow, and the men gunned him down with automatic rifles in
front of one of his sons, who managed to flee, the newspaper said.
An AFP journalist later saw Ouattara's body lying in tall grass behind
the house.
Another Abidjan daily, L'Oeil du peuple, which is close to the ruling
Ivorian Popular Front, on Wednesday published a list of 30 people,
including several in the transport business, whom they claim support former
prime minister Alassana Ouattara, the country's leading opposition
politician, or slain former military ruler Robert Guei.
Guei was shot dead along with his family in Abidjan on September 19,
the day army mutineers and former soldiers took up arms against President
Laurent Gbagbo.
L'Oeil du peuple, which claims that Guei and Ouattara masterminded the
rebellion, alleged that the people on its list were involved in securing
arms for mutineers who launched the uprising with simultaneous attacks on
Abidjan and Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city.
The rebels were repulsed in Abidjan but there have in recent weeks been
a number of disappearances and apparently politically motivated killings
in the port city, despite a strict curfew.
Emile Tehe, the leader of the opposition Ivorian Popular Movement, was
found dead on the outskirts of the city on November 2 with two bullet
wounds in the head and three in the chest.
On November 8, Benoit Dacoury-Tabley was also found shot dead, two days
after his brother Louis quit as deputy leader of the ruling party and
defected to the rebels.
The rebels control the northern half of Ivory Coast and talks between
them and the government has so far failed to bring an end to the crisis,
considered the country has seen since independence from France in 1960.
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