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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, January 03, 2003

12 Cote d'Ivoirean Civilians Bombed to Death

Twelve civilians were killed and several others wounded after a Cote d'Ivoirean government military helicopter fired on a rebel-held fishing village, a top French military official said Thursday.


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Twelve civilians were killed and several others wounded after a Cote d'Ivoirean government military helicopter fired on a rebel-held fishing village, a top French military official said Thursday.

The military helicopter Russian-made MI-24 belonging to Cote d'Ivoirean loyalist forces bombarded the fishing hamlet Menakro, which lies on the shores of a large inland lake around 40 to 50 km inside a ceasefire zone monitored by French peacekeepers.

The French official condemned the attacks as "inadmissible and intolerable" and would "inevitably have consequences" in the three-month war which has already split the world's largest cocoa producer in two, saying the village was far north of a ceasefire line being monitored by French troops.

The 2,500-strong French troops have been monitoring a fragile ceasefire between the main rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), and the government. They have also served asa buffer between the two newly emerging rebel groups and the government forces.

The situation in Cote d'Ivoire has been getting subtle as the rebels rejected peace proposals presented by the West African mediators because of what they declared as favoring the government.

The three rebel groups have mulled the idea of an alliance but put it on hold. The Sept. 19 uprising has turned into a full-scale coup attempt to oust President Laurent Gbagbo with MPCI rebels seizing more than half of the country in the north.


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