Ivory Coast Breaking: Former President Gbagbo Arrested

Video on State television of the arrest of Laurent Gbagbo

Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo and his wife Simone have been detained by forces loyal to Alassane Ouatttara, who won last November's president election but has faced Gbagbo's refusal to step.

United Nations peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said, "The chief of Gbagbo forces ... called us to say that he wants to surrender the weapons. I hope that is going on while I speak."

Ivory Coast: The Battle for Abidjan
Ivory Coast: An Introduction to the Conflict (Purefoy) 

Gbagbo's persistence in holding office, despite the electoral result, re-ignited internal conflict that claimed more than a thousand lives and uprooted a million people.

Ivory Coast Latest: The Battle for Abidjan (Howden)

What began as the week when Laurent Gbagbo would finally concede defeat ended with the Ivory Coast strongman defying the world from his bunker in Abidjan. After watching his area of control shrink to only a few pockets of the lagoon city, his forces pushed back dramatically overnight on Friday with an assault on the French ambassador's residence. 

AFP reported yesterday that Abidjan's Golf Hotel, headquarters of the internationally recognised President-elect, Alassane Ouattara, had come under attack. The UN evacuated 17 British citizens from the high commissioner's residence, which is close to the Gbagbo compound.

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Ivory Coast: Hundreds Killed in a Western Town (Nossiter)

As rebels swept across Ivory Coast in a rapid advance last week to oust the nation’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, hundreds of people were killed in a single town, the United Nations and aid groups said Saturday, in the worst episode of violence during the four-month political crisis that has plunged the country back into civil war.

The exact number of dead was unclear. The United Nations said that 330 people had been killed, while aid organizations put the death toll as high as 1,000. It was also uncertain how many were civilians, and how many were combatants, but Caritas, a Catholic charity whose staff members visited the town, Duékoué, in western Ivory Coast, called it a “massacre.”

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