Ivory Coast's government said yesterday it had put down an attempted coup by dissident soldiers who tried to seize state television and radio facilities and the president's residence overnight.
"Rebel elements tried to take the radio, television and the residence of the president. These rebel forces have been routed," Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou said on state radio.
"The attempted coup can be considered to have been aborted," Defense Minister Moise Lida Kouassi said in the same broadcast, made after the radio station, which had been captured by rebels during the night, was retaken by loyalist forces.
The government did not say who might be behind the coup attempt in the former French colony -- the latest episode of violent revolt in a country that used to be considered a rare haven of stability on a volatile African continent.
Heavy gunfire erupted at the radio station in the central Plateau district of the West African country's commercial capital, Abidjan, just before midnight on Sunday.
State television headquarters in the district of Cocody was attacked at the same time and both were captured by the rebels, whose motives remain unknown.
Lida Kouassi said two paramilitary gendarmes had been killed on the loyalist side. He gave no casualty figures for the rebels but said about 15 had been captured.
Police and gendarmes were maintaining aggressive checkpoints on roads into the center later yesterday, thoroughly searching the few vehicles that had ventured out.
Fierce fighting was reported during the recapture of the television station but the radio station was apparently given up without a struggle, with the dissidents fleeing.
"The [paramilitary] gendarmes just went in. There was no fighting," a man who lives in the area said. A diplomatic source said people had left the radio building peacefully.
Firing, some of it sustained bursts of machine guns, and the occasional loud explosion could be heard throughout the night from central Abidjan.
"I heard shooting and big explosions. They were close enough to shake the house," said a resident near the television station.
Thirty-nine years after independence from France, Ivory Coast experienced its first military coup in December 1999 when a pay mutiny turned into a putsch that brought General Robert Guei to power.
Ten months of military rule ended in a wave of "people power" protests last October after attempts by Guei to rig a presidential vote that was won by President Laurent Gbagbo.
Diplomats reported firing near the official presidential residence overnight but sources in Abidjan and western Ivory Coast said Gbagbo had been in his home village of Mama over the weekend.
He had been expected to return to his office yesterday.
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