Loyalist soldiers were advancing yesterday towards Ivory Coast’s second-biggest city, Bouake, raising the prospect of clashes with renegade troops who have staged a three-day nationwide mutiny over bonus payments, a witness and a military officer said.
At least five protesters were shot and wounded in Bouake earlier in the day when the renegade soldiers used gunfire to break up a march against their mutiny, as popular opposition to the revolt gathered momentum.
So far the government has shied away from confronting the mutineers with force.
But a large military convoy arrived in the town of Tiebissou, about 60km south of Bouake, yesterday afternoon, the witness told Reuters.
A soldier with the convoy, contacted by Reuters, said it was stopping only for a short time before continuing to Bouake.
The uprising by the soldiers, most of them ex-rebel fighters who fought to bring President Alassane Ouattara to power, began in Bouake on Friday before quickly spreading to other cities and towns, mirroring an uprising by the same group in January.
“We know that the Special Forces, Republican Guard and gendarmes are arriving here, but we’re waiting for them,” said Sergeant Seydou Kone, a spokesman for the mutiny.
After allowing traffic to circulate earlier in the day, the mutineers again closed off Bouake, which sits on the main axis between the commercial capital Abidjan — one of the region’s largest ports — and landlocked neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso.
Ivory Coast has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing economies following a decade-long political crisis ended by a 2011 civil war.
But deep divisions persist, particularly in a military assembled from former rebel and loyalist combatants.
The 8,400 mutineers received 5mn CFA francs ($8,371) each in order to end the January revolt.
But the government has struggled to pay remaining bonuses of 7mn CFA francs, with a budget hit by the collapse in the price of cocoa, Ivory Coast’s main export.
On Thursday, following a meeting with authorities in Abidjan, a spokesman for the group said they would drop demands for the remaining money.
But that decision was rejected by some of the soldiers.
“We just want our money. We’ll stay here until the president pays our money,” Kone said.
The defence minister has vowed not to negotiate with the renegade troops, however, and public anger at the mutineers is growing.
The soldiers used gunfire to break up a march against the mutiny in Bouake’s city centre yesterday.
“The population rose up, but the mutineers quickly dispersed the march with shots,” said Bouake resident Simon Guede. “Everything is closed.”
A witness saw five people who had been taken to the city’s main hospital with bullet wounds following the aborted demonstration.
Other protesters, who had been beaten, were also being treated.
Another protest was also broken up yesterday by the mutineers in the northern city of Korhogo, participants said, though there were no immediate reports of casualties there.
Similar rallies and marches were held in the western cocoa hub of Daloa and in Abidjan on Saturday.
Three people were shot and wounded by the mutineers on Saturday.
A supporter of the ruling party Rally of the Republicans holds a placard during a demonstration against the mutiny close to the military headquarters in Abidjan. The placard reads: ‘Mutineers: it’s enough’.
