Ivory Coast Civilians Flee Area Hard Hit by Fighting

Thousands of fearful civilians fled Ivory Coast’s hilly west Thursday, some crammed into rickety minibuses, others singing songs, as the army battled the latest group of rebels to emerge in the fractured West African nation.

Hundreds of people walked down the road south of Man, a key cocoa city that has seen some of the heaviest fighting in a two-month war between the government and two independent rebel groups.

“There are too many dead. You can’t even count them,” said Germaine Gahie, carrying a cloth bundle on her head.

Rebels have seized several towns in the west, including Danane, southwest of Man. Farther south, authorities said, “large-scale operations” were underway to dislodge rebels holding Toulepleu, near the Liberian border.

Rebels seized Man last week and government soldiers ousted them Sunday in a fierce assault with helicopter gunships and tanks. Fleeing residents said the streets were strewn with corpses.

“Most of them were rebels,” said a woman who would only give her first name, Laure. Eight months pregnant, she stood by a thatch hut in Bogouine waiting for a place on a bus.

The rebel uprising began Sept. 19 in Ivory Coast, the world’s leading cocoa producer. The government holds the south, including the key port and economic hub of Abidjan; the insurgents behind the September uprising hold the north; and the new rebel force is battling the army in the west.