Ivory Coast Killing Galvanizes Dissidents

About 1,500 opposition supporters marched through this commercial capital Saturday, mourning a well-known entertainer who many believe was killed in a government-backed political assassination.

As a gray hearse containing the body of Kamara Yerefe wound through Abidjan’s streets, mourners in white veils sang and accused government agents of killing the popular comedian a week ago after seizing him from his home.

Yerefe was from the Muslim north, like many opposition supporters and the rebels who took up arms in September after a coup attempt.

“We are against these mysterious kidnappings at midnight,” said one protester who declined to give her name. “They come, take people away from their homes and kill them.”

President Laurent Gbagbo has not commented on Yerefe’s death, but the United Nations human rights agency said last week that it had evidence that death squads operating in the country had links to some government authorities.

Saturday’s march was the latest in two weeks of riots and mass protests in Abidjan. Most have been by government loyalists angry at a French-brokered peace deal they see as giving too much to the rebels.

France said Saturday that it would closely monitor the implementation of the accord, which Gbagbo endorsed in a Friday speech.

Gbagbo’s finely balanced remarks won support from some of his hard-line backers, including the student leader Charles Ble Goude, who has been behind many protests against the peace deal.

“Let’s try this new remedy,” Gbagbo told the nation Friday. “I invite you to accept the spirit of the ... agreements, and therefore the text ... as a basis to work on.”

But he seemed to reject some elements of the accord, saying it would never override the constitution and insisting that rebels had not been assured top jobs in the defense and interior ministries, as they have claimed.

Goude welcomed the president’s defense of the constitution but insisted that rebels could not join the government.

“In this government, the people of Ivory Coast do not want any rebels,” he told a news conference Saturday.

Meanwhile, Ivory Coast’s largest foreign employer, the 53-nation African Development Bank, announced that it was evacuating some of its staff from Abidjan, for decades a regional economic hub.

The civil war has seen rebels seize half the country. Fighting has killed hundreds and displaced more than a million people.