Violence escalates in Ivory Coast, 300 killed

Rebels controlling northern Ivory Coast have seized a town in government territory and said they were still advancing, raising the prospects of a return to open war. Loyalists of Laurent Gbagbo, clinging to power after an election most of the world says he lost, confirmed the fall of Zouan-Hounien in an overnight attack and said they would fight to take it back. "We re in the process of re-organising ourselves," Yao Yao, head of operations of the pro-Gbagbo Front for the Liberation of the Greater West militia told Reuters by phone from the region. The small, remote town lies in western Ivory Coast near the forested border with Liberia and is not on a key axis, but the fighting there marks a major escalation after a week of growing violence in the world s biggest cocoa producer. Rebel spokesman Ouattara Seydou said the New Forces had been attacked from Zouan-Hounien and were moving south to another town held by Gbagbo loyalists. Ivory Coast s spiral back towards a war fuelled by ethnic animosities follows an election last November which Gbagbo s rival Alassane Ouattara is almost universally recognised to have won. Gbagbo, in power for more than a decade, has refused to leave the presidency of once prosperous Ivory Coast, which has been split between north and south since a 2002-03 war. African Union efforts to end the crisis through diplomacy have made no headway. The spreading violence has killed more than 300 people according to the United Nations, but diplomats think that figure hugely understated because the military rarely discloses its casualties or civilians killed by soldiers. Gun battles raged overnight in the Abobo neighbourhood of the main city of Abidjan where insurgents, dubbed by local media the "invisible commandos", have risen up against Gbagbo.