Army denies killing civilians

The spokesman of Cote d'Ivoire's armed forces, Lt Col Jules Yao Yao, denied on Thursday that the military had killed civilians in an attack on a rebel-held village in the centre of the country.

The attack had been disclosed by Lt Col Ange-Antoine Leccia, spokesman of a French force that has been monitoring a 17 October ceasefire in the West African nation. Leccia was quoted as saying by BBC, Radio France Internationale and AFP that French soldiers had found the bodies of 11 civilians who had died in the helicopter attack on Minankro, a village 100 km north of the capital, Yamassoukro. The death toll mounted to 12 on Thursday when another victim of the attack died in hospital in the central town of Bouake, AFP reported.

Minankro is 50 km north of the ceasefire line between government forces and Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI) rebels who control most of northern Cote d'Ivoire.

Yao Yao said on RFI that the military had not killed civilians.

"We reacted to an attack by the rebels against our position in Gohitafla [another village in central Cote d'Ivoire] and this was not mentioned by anybody," Yao Yao said on RFI. "We carried out a number of operations to clear the area of all rebels. So, as far as we are concerned, those killed were rebels, not civilians."

The French government has come out against the attack.

"France strongly condemns the bombardment of Minankro by a helicopter belonging to the Ivorian armed forces which killed 12 civilians and wounded several others," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said on RFI. "This followed an earlier cease-fire violationon 23 December at Pelezi [another hinterland town].

"We consider this violation of 17 October 2002 to be unacceptable," he added. "We shall be asking the Ivorian authorities for an explanation. The cease-fire must be respected by everyone."

Meanwhile, news media reported that rebels in the west of the country had invaded an oil palm plantation south of the ceasefire line by crossing the border into Liberia, skirting the French forces and re-entering Cote d'Ivoire.