Attack on Ivory Coast female protesters condemned

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – The government of Ivory Coast's internationally recognized leader said the country's deepening political crisis has "crossed over to a new level of horror and barbarism" after soldiers backing his rival fatally shot six female demonstrators.

Thousands of women were protesting sitting president Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to cede power when tanks showed up and soldiers opened fire.

"Indeed, we anticipated everything short of imagining that one could shoot live rounds at unarmed women, all the more with tanks," said Patrick Achi, the spokesman for the government of Alassane Ouattara, whom the U.N. said defeated Gbagbo in the Nov. 28 election.

Nearly 400 people have been killed in the three-month-long dispute, but Thursday's deaths shocked a nation where many assumed soldiers would never open fire on a women's march.

Sirah Drane, 41, who helped organize Thursday's march, said she was holding the megaphone and preparing to address the large crowd that had gathered at a traffic circle in Abobo.

"That's when we saw the tanks," she said. "There were thousands of women. And we said to ourselves, 'They won't shoot at women.' ... I heard a boom. They started spraying us. ... I tried to run and fell down. The others trampled me. Opening fire on unarmed women? It's inconceivable."

The attack prompted an immediate rebuke from the U.S., which like most governments has urged Gbagbo to step down and has recognized his rival as the country's legitimate president.

"The moral bankruptcy of Laurent Gbagbo is evident as his security forces killed women protesters," said U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley in a Twitter message.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council said it is "deeply concerned" about the escalation of violence in Ivory Coast and that it could lead to a resurgence of civil war there.

Last week, Gbagbo's security forces entered the Abobo neighborhood and began shelling it with mortars, a shocking escalation indicating the army is willing to use war-grade weapons on its citizens. Ouattara's camp has in the last two weeks gone from a largely peaceful resistance to an armed one as well, led by rebels from the north and soldiers defecting from Gbagbo's army.

More than 200,000 people have fled the fighting in Abobo, the local U.N. peacekeeping mission reported Thursday. The United States recommended this week that all its citizens leave the country immediately. The West African nation of Mauritania became the first country to organize an evacuation, when buses carrying 200 of its citizens departed from Abidjan Friday morning.

Multiple delegations of African leaders have come through Abidjan, Ivory Coast's commercial hub, to try to persuade Gbagbo to leave office. Gbagbo has rejected all their proposals and offers of amnesty. even though U.N.-certified results showed he had lost the race by half-a-million votes to Ouattara. Instead, he demanded the U.N. leave the country and accused them of meddling in state affairs.