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.
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