UN probing human rights violations after rebel clashes

The United Nations mission in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI) has said it is investigating reports of human rights violations in the northern town of Korhogo following bloody clashes between rival rebel factions there last month. Supporters of rebel leader Guillaume Soro clashed with a rival faction in Korhogo and Bouake, the main town in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire, over a period of two days. Soro's New Forces movement said afterwards that 22 people had been killed in a series of firefights, but the head of one UN organisation told IRIN on Wednesday that the intensity and the duration of the clashes suggested a higher death toll. Several Ivorian newspapers have reported the suspected existence of a mass grave in Korhogo, which lies some 600 km north of the capital Abidjan. Two pro-government publications quoted members of President Laurent Gbagbo's army as saying 300 people had died in Korhogo and Bouake - more than 10 times the rebels' estimate. "A team from the human rights division of ONUCI is checking allegations of serious human rights violations which might have happened in the region after the fighting on June 20 and 21," ONUCI said in a statement from Korhogo on Sunday. The UN mission did not detail these allegations, but said its team would announce the results of its investigations as soon as these had been completed. A UN human rights official told IRIN that the team would present its report next week. Reports of mass graves in Cote d'Ivoire have cropped up repeatedly since a coup d'etat in 1999 put the country on a slippery path towards outright civil war three years later. Shortly after the presidential elections in October 2000 which brought Gbagbo to power, a mass grave containing the bodies of 57 young men was found a neighbourhood of Abidjan. On Wednesday a humanitarian source in Korhogo told IRIN that no burial pit had yet been discovered there. “So far, nothing. People are talking but that’s it”, said the source, who asked not to be named. Cote d'Ivoire, the world's largest cocoa producer, has been split into a government-controlled south and rebel-held north since civil war broke out in September 2002. The peace process has ground to a halt in recent months and all eyes are now on a summit in Accra at the end of July to break the political deadlock. At the end of June, the rebels fought amongst themselves. Soro's supporters said the rebel leader had survived an assassination attempt, backed by Cote d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo and his Guinean counterpart Lansana Conte. Amadou Kone, one of Soro’s senior aides, told IRIN that the rebel movement was conducting its own investigation into the alleged mass grave and would also announce the results of its probe next week. "It will tell us the number of deaths, how they died, whether or not a mass grave exists," Kone said by telephone from Bouake. Gbagbo's party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), has called for a more formal international investigation. "We demand the setting up of an international investigation commission to establish the facts and take the necessary action," the FPI said in a statement on Monday. Earlier this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights sent a team of three international human rights experts to Cote d'Ivoire to investigate killings by Gbagbo's security forces after opposition parties tried to stage a banned rally on 25 March. The UNHCHR report concluded that at least 120 people had been killed in a two-day crackdown by the security forces and shadowy paramilitary groups linked to Gbagbo. The government, which rejected the report, gave a death toll of 37. Diplomats suspect that Gbagbo and his party are not just demanding a full UN investigation into deaths arising from the recent fighting in the north in order to embarrass the rebels. "The FPI is drumming the drum because they know that a lot of people who were killed were (government) infiltrators”, one veteran Western diplomat in Abidjan said. Several Abidjan newspapers have recently quote military sources as boasting that the army has successfully managed to infiltrate the rebels' ranks.