Student demonstrator shot dead by police

Police shot dead a youth in Abidjan on Thursday as they opened fire on several hundred students displaced from the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire, who were protesting at the government's failure to make a promised compensation payment. A police source said riot police fired in the air to try and disperse the students, who were damaging parked cars and snatching mobile phones from passers by. The youth who was killed was hit by a stray bullet, he added. The demonstration was staged at a very sensitive time, one day before the anniversary of a failed coup on 19 September 2002 that pushed Cote d'Ivoire into civil war. Rebel forces rapidly occupied the north of the country in the days that followed the coup attempt, sparking an exodus of several hundred thousand civilians to the government-held south. There were fears that more student demonstrations would take place in Abidjan on Friday in protest at the police killing and that these might prompt further violence. Thursday's march was organised by students from the central city of Bouake, which is now the rebel capital, and the northern town of Korhogo, near the border with Burkina Faso. They fled south after fighting broke out last year and had been promised a compensation payment of 300,000 CFA (US $500) each by the government of Prime Minister Seydou Diarra for having missed a year of education. The students staged a first march on the prime minister's office in early July to demand the money. A spokesman for Diarra confirmed that compensation had indeed been promised to the students. He said the Minister of Higher Education, Zemogo Fofana, had been asked to take care of the matter. Despite the signing of a peace agreement in January and the formation of a broad-based government of national reconciliation in March, relations between President Laurent Gbagbo and the rebels who continue to occupy the north remain tense. Gbagbo accused the rebels of backing an alleged coup plot against him last month. Nevertheless, Albert Tevoedjre, the UN special envoy to Cote d'Ivoire, said on Wednesday that he believed the process of disarming the rebels and restoring government administration to the north could start on 1 October.