The intercommunal clashes which took place from Monday to Wednesday in Dabou, 50 km west of Abidjan, left 16 dead and 67 injured, according to a new government report this Saturday, October 24, one week before the presidential election.
The government also announces in its press release the arrest of “
52 individuals
” and the seizure of 12 rifles and 70 machetes, after these “
extremely serious incidents
”.
The previous assessment communicated Friday by the mayor of the city reported 11 dead.
Read also: The EU condemns the violence in Côte d'Ivoire and worries about the presidential election
The department of Dabou is under curfew until Sunday.
Calm has returned since Thursday in the city.
According to residents, the first unrest had started on Monday and degenerated into intercommunal clashes on Tuesday between Adioukrous, a local ethnic group known to be favorable to the opposition, and Dioulas, an ethnic group from the north, deemed to be pro-power.
The situation then worsened with the use of automatic weapons, according to several witnesses.
According to the government, “
the first investigations revealed that these acts were instigated, with the presence of non-resident individuals in the locality who indiscriminately attacked the physical integrity and property of members of the two communities by having the dark design to create an inter-community conflict
”.
"
The investigations are continuing
" to question the perpetrators of these acts as well as the sponsors, continues the government, without further details.
Read also: The keys to understanding the election under pressure in Côte d'Ivoire
About 30 people have died since August in violence linked to the October 31 presidential election.
In power since 2010, President Alassane Ouattara is running for a controversial third term, while the candidacies of several opposition figures have been invalidated.
The head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell on Friday deplored "
the serious violence
" in Côte d'Ivoire and expressed "
his concern at the lack of consensus surrounding the electoral process
".
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, was already worried Thursday "
of the tense situation in Côte d'Ivoire before the presidential election
."
The country has fallen into a pre-election crisis with explosions of violence in several provincial towns since August, ten years after the post-electoral crisis of 2010-2011, born of President Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to recognize his electoral defeat facing Alassane Ouattara.
Coming after a decade of tensions that had cut the country in two, it had claimed 3,000 lives.
