ABIDJAN, Nov 23 (AFP) - Human rights organisations in crisis-torn Ivory
Coast said on Saturday they were concerned about the activities of "death
squads" who have killed several dozen people in the country's economic
capital Abidjan.
The Ivory Coast government and rebels who control the northern half of
the country signed a truce on October 17, but in spite of this and a dusk-
to-dawn curfew abductions and murders continue in Abidjan.
"The growing insecurity in Abidjan is due to the death squads, unknown
people who are sowing terror. It is like we are all living under a death
sentence, it is very worrying," Martin Bleou, the president of the Ivorian
League for Human Rights (LIDHO), told AFP.
LIDHO was trying to gather testimony from as many witnesses as possible
because it believed "there are violations of human rights everywhere," he
added.
The Ivorian Movement for Human Rights (MIDH) said it, too, believed the
spate of killings was the work of death squads.
"There are death squads, we are sure of that, and their mission is to
kill people, not to ask questions. They are not controlled by the normal
military hierachy," Ibrahima Doumbia, the vice-president of the IMHR told
AFP.
"We have counted 50 people who have been shot dead in Abidjan, and
those are only the bodies we have seen. There have been certainly been
more but we only list those cases that we see or where we have direct
witnesses," he said.
The government has denied responsibility for the killings in Abidjan
and
hinted that it would be the work of the rebels who took up arms against
Presindent Laurent Gbagbo on September 19, plunging Ivory Coast into its
worst post-independence crisis.
It said "people in camouflage fatigues" who have "infiltrated" the city
and other areas that are held by the Ivorian army, were to blame for the
killings.
On the first day of the uprising Ivory Coast's military leader Robert
Guei was gunned down along with his wife.
In early November opposition politician Emile Tehe and the brother of
one of the rebel's Benoit Dacoury-Tabley were shot dead, while this week a
prominent businessman was gunned down in Abidjan.
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