Corpses contaminate drinking water in troubled west

Wells and streams contaminated by the bodies of people killed in recent fighting are threatening the health of thousands of people who have begun returning to their villages in Cote d'Ivoire's "Wild West" following the recent reimposition of law and order there by French and West African peacekeeping forces. An officer serving with French peace-keeping forces in the area that straddles the front line between government and rebel forces near the frontier with Liberia told IRIN at the weekend that the bodies of hundreds of people killed by indisciplined militiamen fighting for both the government and rebels had been simply dumped in wells and water courses. Most of the victims were civilians who were preyed upon by the militias, rather than actual combatants. A force of several hundred heavily armed peacekeepers was sent into the heavily forested area bounded by the towns of Duekuoe, Man, Danane and Toulepleu a month ago. Since then, the marauding bands of armed men, which included many Liberian fighters, have disappeared from view and law and order has returned to the district. The French officer, who asked not to be named, said that in the village of Kahin near Duekoue nearly 40 people had died in two days from an outbreak of measles that was thought to have been caused by water contaminated by the rotting corpses of people killed in militia raids. He also named two other villages nearby which had suffered similar water contamination problems. "To cover their tracks, corpses were just thrown into wells and water courses which have become unfit for consumption," he said. The Abidjan newspaper Soir Info said last Friday that its reporters found about 60 heavily decomposed bodies lying in and around a stream 300 metres from Fengolo, another village in the same area. One relief agency operating in the area, Solidarite, said it had heard similar stories of water contamination from Action Internationale Contre la Faim (AICF), whose officials were not immediately available for comment. Other agencies contacted by IRIN said they were unaware of such a problem. The French officer said there was also an emerging food shortage in the region since many of those now emerging from the bush had lost everything, including their food stocks and seed for planting new crops. "The worst thing is that the population is coming back en masse with nothing to eat," he said. A civil war erupted in this prosperous cocoa and coffee producing country in September last year, but the situation stabilised in most of the country after the government and rebels signed a peace agreement in January. That led to the formation of a government of national reconciliation in April. However, violence continued in the "Wild West" long after fighting died down along the rest of the front line that has separates the rebel held north of Cote d'Ivoire from the government-held south. It only ended after the French and West African peacekeepers sent in two large columns of armoured cars to establish a "zone of confidence" there on May 23.