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Hundreds Protest Women's Deaths in Ivory Coast
Wednesday, 09 March 2011 19:33
Hundreds of marching women converged Tuesday near the bloodstained pavement where soldiers fatally shot seven
unarmed female protesters last week in an attack that has prompted a wave of criticism from around the world. Male relatives built a wall of burned-out cars to block the mouth of the freeway leading into the suburb of Abobo where the female demonstrators gathered.
Mariam Bamba, 32, picked up a tree branch next to one of the blood stains on the pavement where the women had been mowed down in a hail of gunfire.
"This leaf is all that they were carrying when they were killed," she said.
A video obtained by The Associated Press captured the minutes before the attack Thursday in Abobo. In the video, which was also posted on YouTube, the crowd scatters as screaming is heard. Then the cameraman pans over the collapsed bodies of at least four women. Another woman who is still alive tries to lift herself up and collapses in her own blood.
Many of the organizers of the deadly demonstration stayed home Tuesday fearing reprisal by security forces. But hundreds of others took to the streets in defiance to express their disgust at the regime of strongman Laurent Gbagbo.
Gbagbo has refused to cede power even though the country's election commission declared opposition leader Alassane Ouattara the winner of the Nov. 28 vote. Nearly 400 people have already been killed, most of them civilians who voted for Ouattara.
But Thursday's violence against the all-women's march prompted an international outcry.
Britain's Foreign Office Minister for Africa, Henry Bellingham, called it "a deplorable and cowardly act against unarmed protesters calling for the results of the presidential elections to be respected."
And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a stinging rebuke saying that "Gbagbo and his forces have shown a callous disregard for human life."
More than 200,000 people have fled the suburb of Abobo, the local U.N. peacekeeping mission reported, after Gbagbo's security forces entered the neighborhood and began shelling it with mortars. Fighting also has broken out in western Ivory Coast, where rebels allied with Ouattara have seized control of a nearly 30-mile (50-kilometer) corridor along the country's border with Liberia.
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. Previous attempts to mediate have fallen flat after Gbagbo rejected offers of amnesty, exile and teaching positions in the United States.
© 2011 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.newsmaxworld.com
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