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Ivory Coast Army Retakes Town After Deadly Attack

Ivory Coast Army Retakes Town After Deadly Attack

On Friday, gunmen took over a village on Ivroy Coast´s  southwestern border with Liberia after gunmen seized it in an attack that killed 13 people. Now the army has recaptured it, the country’s defense minister said.

“Around 40 men attacked and looted the village of Fetai, located on the Cavally River separating Ivory Coast and Liberia, early on Thursday, Paul Koffi Koffi told journalists in the commercial capital Abidjan,” reports Business Insider.

“There was an ambush that killed three (soldiers)… Ten were killed among the civilian population. We’re carrying out clean-up operations in the forest and we’ve gone all the way to the Cavally River … The situation is under control,” he said.

“This isn’t an attack like the other times … These are the youth from the region who are refugees. They are bandits,” Koffi Koffi said, rejecting the idea that the raid was politically motivated.

Ivory Coast is the world’s top cocoa producer but it is still recovering from a decade-long political crisis that culminated in a brief 2011 civil war after former president Laurent Gbagbo did not  accept his election defeat to Alassane Ouattara.

Gbagbo awaits trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for suspected crimes against humanity during the 2011 war. An extimated 3,000 people died during that war and some 220,000 Ivorians fled into Liberia during the post-election conflict. Around 46,000, including former pro-Gbagbo militia fighters, are still there, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

Ivory Coast has asked the United Nations to deploy drones along its border with Liberia.