Heavy gunfire erupts in Ivory Coast’s two main cities
BOUAKE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) – Heavy gunfire erupted on Monday in Ivory Coast’s two largest cities of Abidjan and Bouake as the military said it pressed an operation to quash a fourday nationwide army mutiny over bonus payments, witnesses said.
Residents also reported gunfire in the port city and major cocoa hub of San Pedro.
More than 200 commercial trucks were stranded on the roadside after mutinous soldiers sealed off the southern entrance to Bouake, the epicenter of the revolt, on Monday, witnesses said.
London cocoa futures climbed to a five-week high on Monday due to the unrest in Ivory Coast, the world’s top producer as businesses in the sector closed.
A Reuters team traveling from the capital Yamoussoukro towards Bouake, saw only a handful of loyalist military vehicles, a day after the head of the army said troops were being sent there to “re-establish order.”
Most of a large column of troops spotted on Sunday evening appeared to have withdrawn – suggesting any government operation was not yet fully under way.
Sporadic gunfire was heard overnight in Bouake as well as at military camps in Abidjan. Shooting in both cities intensified before dawn.
“There was heavy shooting at the northern entrance to the city and in the city center. It’s calmed a bit but we’re still hearing gunfire,” said one Bouake resident. Other residents confirmed the shooting.
The soldiers staged the revolt over delayed bonus payments promised by the government after a mutiny in January but not fully paid after a collapse in the price of cocoa, Ivory Coast’s main export, caused a revenue crunch.
Ivory Coast has been touted as a post-war success story because it emerged from a 2002-2011 political crisis as one of the world’s fastest growing economies under President Alassane Ouattara.
But it remains divided and a wave of mutinies that began earlier this year has exposed the lack of unity in a military assembled from former rebel and loyalist combatants.
In signs of the economic impact of the crisis, the banking association, the APBEF, ordered all banks to remain closed on Monday and many businesses at the port in Abidjan from which cocoa is exported were also closed.
Heavy shooting was also heard in Daloa, a hub for western cocoa growing regions.
“All businesses are closed here in Daloa. The banks are closed and so are the cocoa buying businesses,” said Aka Marcel, a farmer cooperative manager in Daloa.
A spokesman for the mutiny denied that any clashes occurred in Bouake and said the renegade soldiers were firing in the air to dissuade any advance on the city.