Hundreds of rebels and government soldiers withdrew from the former buffer zone that once split Ivory Coast and returned to their barracks in the first stage of a nationwide disarmament program expected to take three months.
Several hundred soldiers who had gathered south of the buffer zone at Tiebissou climbed into trucks on Saturday and drove to an army barracks in the capital, Yamoussoukro.
North of the buffer zone at Djebonoua, rebels also packed into vehicles and headed toward military barracks in their stronghold at Bouake, where they will eventually hand in their weapons to either be integrated into the army or demobilized.
PHOTO: AFP
``Starting today, you will quit the front lines. There is no more front in Ivory Coast," President Laurent Gbagbo told soldiers in Tiebissou, which was in government hands throughout the conflict. Tiebissou is about 350km north of the West African country's main city, Abidjan.
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, who led the rebellion until a peace deal brokered in neighboring Burkina Faso in March, was also on hand.
``This day is important because this day effectively, concretely marks the beginning of disarmament," Soro said, also speaking in Tiebissou.
Both leaders later headed to Djebonoua to observe rebels withdrawing.
Ivory Coast's warring parties first agreed to disarm during a peace accord reached several months after a brief war erupted in 2002, splitting the nation in two and leaving rebels in control of the north.
In 2004, the government finally announced the start of disarmament, but the bickering parties delayed the process repeatedly -- until now.
Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa exporter, was once an oasis of stability in war-ravaged West Africa.
A 1999 coup sparked years of uprisings and eventually war.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
RSS