ICRC urges respect for humanitarian law

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Friday urged parties in the Ivorian conflict to comply with the rules of the international humanitarian law. In a news release, ICRC reminded all those bearing weapons of their obligation to respect in particular, the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols and to spare civilians and their property. It said furthermore that all those taking direct part in the hostilities, included wounded and captured combatants who were no longer able to defend themselves, must be treated with humanity and without discrimination. To execute such people without a fair trial, to loot civilian property or to hinder humanitarian action in any way were serious violations of humanitarian law, it noted. In the meantime, the organisation in collaboration with the Ivoirian Red Cross are providing emergency medical care for wounded soldiers and civilians in the western town of Man. In the other western towns of Toulepleu and Danane the National Society volunteers were also treating victims of the recent fighting and emergency medical supplies have been dispatched to Daloa military hospital also in the west, where soldiers wounded at the front are brought, it added. The World Food Programme has received a contribution of US $400,000 from the government of Switzerland to support its air operations in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, a WFP news release said on Friday. "The US $400,000 Swiss donation in West Africa comes at a time when needs in the region have become acute increasingly urgent," WFP Regional Director Manuel Aranda da Silva said. "Should WFP be forced to cut back these air operations, the ability of WFP as well as other UN agencies and NGOs {non-governmental organizations] to serve the region would be severely hampered," he added. The continuing crisis in Liberia, as well as the civil unrest in Cote d'Ivoire makes WFP's air operation vital - not only for passenger transport but also for the rapid delivery of emergency food rations, medical supplies and security evacuations, the agency stated. The Swiss contribution enables WFP to pursue air operations up to the end of February 2003. Meanwhile, French troops monitoring the ceasefire signed on 17 October by rebels of the Mouvement Patriotique de Côte d'Ivoire (MPCI) and accepted by the government said on Friday they had discovered a mass grave western area of Pelezi some 70 km from Daloa, news organisations reported. French army spokesman Ange-Antoine Leccia told Reuters that the grave was 30 metres long by two metres wide. Legs were protruding from the earth. "We do not know how many bodies are there, who killed these people, or when," he said. "It is not our mission to exhume the bodies and we are simply reporting what we have found," he added. The crisis Cote d'Ivoire started as a mutiny on 19 September and saw the country divided in two with the south in the government's hand and the north in the hands of MPCI. It however took a new twist on 28 November with the emergence of two new rebel groups MPJ and Ivorian Populaire Movement of the Great West (MPIGO) which captured four towns in the west.