Wanton killings end hope of peace

WEARY and frightened villagers straggling from the bush in western Ivory Coast tell of dozens of killings and wanton abuses after a surge of fighting that has soured hopes of peace.

The involvement of warring Liberian tribes, inured to atrocity by years of bloodshed, has made the rebel conflict in this corner of the West African country even more savage and tangled than elsewhere.

It is hard to get a precise toll for recent deaths from the accounts of those limping into the French-protected town of Duekoue two women shot by the road here, five people killed there, another nine at a cocoa farmer's camp in the bush.

"They killed 20 people last Wednesday. They just came and killed them. Women, old people, they killed them," said planter Cesar Zrho from a village north of Duekoue.

Like many of the latest wave of refugees, he fled from rebels and their Liberian allies during fighting that erupted in the west of the world's top cocoa grower late last year. He hoped he would be safe in the bush.

But violence intensified this month just as a power-sharing government was being put in place to end seven months of civil war in the once-stable country the cornerstone of an accord brokered by former colonial power France.

The question now is whether the fighting in the west will derail the shaky peace process, or if it can be contained without pushing what was once a regional economic powerhouse back into a war that has cost thousands of lives.

"There is no peace. Evening and morning people are coming here with their wounds. They are killing people in the bush, killing them on the roads," said Marcelin Ble Gnao, helping organise food for the displaced people in Duekoue.

The most recent combat has been concentrated near the Liberian border, west of Duekoue. But fleeing villagers say the rebels told them they were avenging advances by Gbagbo's forces.