Global Policy Forum

By Somini Sengupta

Government planes in Ivory Coast conducted bombing raids against two rebel-held towns starting shortly after sunrise on Thursday, ending a tenuous yearlong cease-fire and signaling a possible resumption of civil war. A spokesman for the French military in Ivory Coast, Col. Henri Aussavy, said the raids began at 7:15 a.m. against a rebel base in Bouaké, a guerrilla stronghold. Two more raids followed, one on the rebel-run television station in Bouaké and a third farther north, at Korhogo, an official with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast said.

There were no confirmed reports of casualties, but a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a telephone interview that at least a dozen wounded had been evacuated from Bouaké. There were no reports of rebel retaliation.

In Abidjan, a commercial hub, government loyalists held a demonstration threatening a full-scale war to recapture territory that has been in rebel hands since the outbreak of civil war in September 2002, according to news agency reports. "We are going to reconquer our territory, and reunify Ivory Coast," Col. Phillipe Mangou, a government military chief for operations, told The Associated Press. There was no official government comment on the air raids.

The bombings ended a cease-fire between rebel forces and the government of President Laurent Gbagbo as well as a power-sharing deal that had allotted important cabinet posts to rebel leaders. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, called the airstrikes a "major violation of the cease-fire" and warned Mr. Gbagbo and the rebels against further hostilities. In a statement on Thursday, the Security Council urged that the cease-fire be "fully respected." Mr. Gbagbo's government has violated some of the terms of a truce agreement signed in January 2003, and the rebels have refused to disarm.

Ivory Coast, a former French colony, is the world's largest producer of cocoa and was once an oasis of prosperity and political stability in West Africa, welcoming migrant workers from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali to work on the vast plantations. But a fall in cocoa prices, gradual economic decline and simmering grievances by the largely Muslim north erupted into full-scale civil war. Rebels control the north and the government holds the south, and tribal and religious loyalties have added a particularly nasty flavor to the conflict. The last major upheaval was in March, when a government crackdown on a demonstration in Abidjan left 120 people dead, according to a United Nations inquiry. Some 6,000 United Nations peacekeepers and 4,500 French troops are posted in Ivory Coast, charged with keeping the warring parties at bay.

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