Night falls on Abidjan: Looting, gangs, burning corpses – and hungry people afraid to go out

Daniel Howden reports from the perilous streets of Abidjan, as the conflict in Ivory Coast edges closer to a bloody showdown

Friday, 8 April 2011

The roadblocks begin right outside the airport. Rusted barrels and planks are strewn across side streets, manned by boys in filthy vests. The boys are armed with little more than their own strength in numbers. The looting lends the streets of Abidjan the appearance of an earthquake zone. Burnt-out cars are overturned. Emptied streets are carpeted in smashed glass. What’s left on the Tarmac is only what was broken as it was looted.

A line of office furniture reaches as far as a smashed wardrobe and stops. Then the bodies start. At first, the fire seems to be nothing more than a pile of tyres. Then a soldier explains that people have begun to burn the corpses to prevent disease from spreading. Further along, a cloud of stinking black smoke rises from a garishly painted bus stop. A charred leg rises unmistakably out of the flames.

As Mexicans protest, a new mass grave is found

‘It seems that we are like animals that can be murdered with impunity,’ says poet whose son was killed

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON

MEXICO CITY – Fifty-nine bodies were found buried Wednesday in a series of pits in the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas, as people marched in protest against on going drug cartel violence.

The bodies were discovered near the site where suspected drug gang members massacred 72 migrants last summer, officials said.

Security forces stumbled on the site as they were investigating reports that passengers had been pulled off several buses by gunmen

in the area in what may have been an attempt at forced recruitment by a drug gang.

Heavy fighting loosens Gbagbo’s grip



TIM COCKS AND ANGE ABOA ABIDJAN, CôTE D’IVOIRE – Apr 05 2011

Sustained machinegun and heavy weapons fire rang out from the direction of the palace in the commercial capital Abidjan before dawn in the heaviest fighting since soldiers backing presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara entered the city five days ago, a Reuters witness said.

A spokesperson for Ouattara’s government said late on Monday his troops had already taken control of Gbagbo’s official presidential residence, but his statement could not be independently verified.

UN staff flee Abidjan amid warnings of ‘bloodbath’

Troops loyal to Ivory Coast’s recognised President-elect prepare for ‘final push’

By Daniel Howden, Africa Correspondent Monday, 4 April 2011

The United Nations has started to evacuate its staff from Abidjan ahead of a bloody final battle for Ivory Coast’s commercial capital that is expected to start today.

Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused international appeals to stand down after losing an election last year, has ordered his supporters into the streets to form a “human shield” around him while the forces of Alassane Ouattara, the President-elect, have been massing on the outskirts of the city.

“We are in the last kilometre of a marathon, the last step, which is always the toughest,” UN spokesman Hamadun Touré told The Independent by telephone from Abidjan.

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored

Ed Vulliamy

The Observer, Sunday 3 April 2011

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

AFTERSHOCKS

A motorist in quake-hit Iwate died of carbon monoxide poisoning while waiting for gasoline in a line that stretched longer than a kilometer. The man had been trying to keep his car warm with a kerosene heater.

Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett apparently believes that the earthquake “is the kind of extraordinary event that creates a buying opportunity for shares in Japanese companies.”

It was reported that Kansai Electric Power Co. will invest up to ¥100 billion in an effort “to make its nuclear plants more resistant to earthquakes and tsunami.” Maybe they could ask Warren Buffett for some help.

The speaker of the Osaka Prefectural Assembly was forced to apologize after calling earthquake-inflicted damage at a local government office “a divine fortune.” The pol had opposed a plan to move all municipal offices to the damaged building.

It was reported that some teachers and school officials in Tohoku are holding graduation ceremonies at evacuation centers. Others are visiting their students’ homes to hand-deliver diplomas.

The central government is mulling whether to establish a full-fledged federal agency that would specifically deal with post-quake reconstruction.

Kadafi government rebuffs Libya rebel cease-fire offer

After rebels refused for weeks to negotiate with Moammar Kadafi’s regime, a rebel leader offers a cease-fire if Kadafi agrees to withdraw his forces from besieged cities and permit peaceful protests.

By Borzou Daragahi and David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya- Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi’s regime brusquely swatted down a truce offered by rebels Friday and continued to pummel opposition positions in both the eastern and western sections of the country.

After rebels had refused for weeks to negotiate with Kadafi’s government, the leader of the opposition’s national council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, offered a cease-fire if Kadafi agreed to withdraw his forces from besieged Libyan cities and permitted peaceful protests.

But Musa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the regime, dismissed the offer as a trick.

Britain in talks with 10 more Gaddafi aides

Inner circle turn their backs on besieged Libyan dictator

By Cahal Milmo, Oliver Wright and Donald Macintyre in Tripoli Friday, 1 April 2011

The British Government said it was in urgent talks with up to another 10 senior figures in Colonel Gaddafi’s creaking regime about possible defection following the dramatic arrival in Britain of the Libyan dictator’s chief henchman for much of his 40 years in power.

As former foreign minister Moussa Koussa was reported to be “talking voluntarily” to British officials yesterday, the Libyan regime was desperately struggling to limit the damage of the stunning desertion, suggesting he was exhausted and suffering from mental problems.

Libya rebels flee eastward by the hundreds

Kadafi’s forces appear poised to take Port Brega after pushing the opposition fighters out of Ras Lanuf, another oil refinery city.

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

March 31, 2011

Reporting from Port Brega, Libya- Dispirited rebel fighters continued their headlong retreat across eastern Libya on Wednesday, surrendering a strategic oil city they captured just three days earlier and fleeing eastward by the hundreds.

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi appeared poised late in the day to seize a second oil refinery city, Port Brega, as rebels in gun trucks near the city turned and fled at the sound of exploding rockets and artillery. Kadafi’s men had pushed rebels out of Ras Lanuf, site of a petrochemical complex and port, on Wednesday morning.

Rebels hope tribal rifts will speed their march to Gaddafi’s birthplace

Loyalists offer little resistance ahead of battle for Sirte. Kim Sengupta joins the advancing forces.

Tuesday, 29 March 2011

The scale and nature of resistance from the regime’s soldiers indicated how much their firepower had been devastated by Western air strikes. There was little of the heavy shelling that had made the revolutionary forces flee in the past. This was replaced instead by sporadic rockets and small-arms clashes on the ground.

The rebel commanders, nonetheless, remain worried after reports that the male population of Sirte had been armed and what remains of the regime’s armour and artillery on the eastern front has been deployed to protect the city. Renewed bombing of the military positions in the city by international coalition warplanes are said to have caused some damage, but the city remains well guarded.