Thousands of women were protesting sitting president Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to cede power when tanks showed up and soldiers opened fire.
“Indeed, we anticipated everything short of imagining that one could shoot live rounds at unarmed women, all the more with tanks,” said Patrick Achi, the spokesman for the government of Alassane Ouattara, whom the UN said defeated Gbagbo in the Nov. 28 election.
The UN says that nearly 400 people have been killed in the three-month-long dispute, though Ouattara’s camp said on Friday that total was too conservative and should be closer to 1,000.
Thursday’s deaths were especially shocking, however, because many assumed soldiers would never open fire on women.
“The killing is going on unabated,” said Ouattara’s Justice and Human Rights Minister Jeannot Kouadio Ahoussou in Geneva.
More than 200,000 people have fled Abobo, the local UN peacekeeping mission reported, after a week when Gbagbo’s security forces entered the neighborhood and began shelling it with mortars.
The shocking escalation indicates the army is willing to use war-grade weapons on its citizens. Ouattara’s camp has also stepped up its resistance, led by rebels from the north and soldiers defecting from Gbagbo’s army.
Thursday’s attack prompted an immediate rebuke from the US , which like most governments has urged Gbagbo to step down and has recognized his rival as the country’s legitimate president.
“The moral bankruptcy of Laurent Gbagbo is evident as his security forces killed women protesters,” said US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley in a Twitter message.
In New York, the UN Security Council said it is “deeply concerned” about the escalation of violence in Ivory Coast and that it could lead to a resurgence of civil war there.
The European Union’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton called for Gbagbo to cease all violence and cede power to Ouattara.
Fighting also has broken out in the west, where several battles have taken place between rebels allied to Ouattara and regular army soldiers loyal to Gbagbo. The UN refugee body announced on Friday that it would be suspending its activities in the west due to the security concerns.
“We will continue our work in Abidjan and elsewhere,” said UNHCR protection officer Monique Sokhan.
Hopes linger for a negotiated solution, even after a high-level African Union panel of five presidents extended its timeline for mediation by a month.
After a meeting in Mauritania on Friday, the panel announced that it would return again to Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s biggest city, to meet both leaders.
Previous attempts to mediate have fallen flat after Gbagbo rejected offers of amnesty, exile and teaching positions in the US.
UN certified election results show that Gbagbo lost last November’s election by almost nine percent. He refused to recognize those results, instead accusing the UN of meddling in state affairs and ordering the UN to leave the country.
