Ivory Coast's defiant ruler surrounded, but he still won't give up
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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- An armed group trying to install the Ivory Coast's internationally recognized president surrounded a bunker that the defeated incumbent refuses to leave, saying they will wait for him to come out.
Laurent Gbagbo remained defiant Thursday, even after air strikes hammered his military bases and his residence, where he is holed up with his wife in a tunnel. Via a spokesman in Paris, Gbagbo continued to insist that he had won November's election.
"I reached the head of state and his wife less than an hour ago, and no -- he will not surrender. President Gbagbo will not cede," his adviser Toussaint Alain said.
Gbagbo has refused to accept defeat even though he was declared the loser, both by his country's electoral body and by international observers, including the United Nations.
After four months of diplomacy, his opponent Alassane Ouattara, who is internationally recognized as having won the election, gave the go-ahead for a military intervention led by fighters from a former rebel group. Ouattara had pleaded with the international community for months to intervene and remove Gbagbo by force.
An armed group backing Ouattara stormed the gates of Gbagbo's home Wednesday, but stopped short of killing the entrenched leader.
"This will be over very soon," Youssoufou Bamba, Ouattara's envoy to the United Nations, said in New York.
He said that when Gbagbo is taken, "he will be alive and well." Bamba denied that his government was employing mercenaries from other countries for the fight.
Also in New York, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said she was "extremely concerned" about the situation in Abidjan, which has led hundreds of thousands of residents to flee their homes.
"People who have remained are trapped in their homes by the fighting that has raged on around them for over a week," she said in a statement. "Aid workers have largely been unable to move, as well. ... The important thing to remember here is it is ordinary people who are caught up in this violence."
Amos also visited a town in western Ivory Coast where aid groups have documented hundreds of killings.
"In Duekoue, I saw evidence of what must have been terrible violence," she said. "Burned and destroyed buildings, looting and destruction."
Amos said the United Nations had launched an investigation, and that the officials had heard reports of similar incidents elsewhere.
Heavy weapons fire was heard across Abidjan overnight, but on Thursday, hundreds of people ventured out in search of water, despite the dangers.
From his bunker, Gbagbo blasted the world, calling the operation to oust him an international "game of poker."
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