ABIDJAN, (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo was arrested today after French armoured vehicles closed in on the compound where the self-proclaimed president had been holed up in a bunker.
A column of more than 30 French armoured vehicles moved in on Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan after helicopter gunships attacked the compound overnight in bid to end a months-long political standoff that had descended into civil war.
Gbagbo refused to step down when Alassane Ouattara won last November’s presidential election, according to results certified by the United Nations, reigniting a civil war that has claimed more than a thousand lives and uprooted a million people.
“Yes, he has been arrested,” Affoussy Bamba, a spokeswoman for Ouattara, told Reuters.
Gbagbo’s spokesman in Ivory Coast, Ahoua Don Mello, told Reuters: “President Laurent Gbagbo came out of his bunker and surrendered to the French without offering resistance.”
French officials said Gbagbo had been arrested by Ouattara’s forces backed by the United Nations and the French military.
Shortly after the news broke, Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said the French president had just had a long telephone conversation with Ouattara.
French armed forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard said: “Just after 3 o’clock, the ex-president Laurent Gbagbo handed himself over to the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. At no moment did French forces enter either the garden or the residence of Gbagbo.”
A French Defence Ministry official said: “It’s not French forces who arrested Laurent Gbagbo … It was Ouattara forces supported by UNOCI (the U.N. mission) and Licorne (French forces).”
Ouattara’s spokesman Bamba said Gbagbo had been taken to the Hotel Golf in Abidjan where his rival has had his headquarters since the presidential election last November.
United Nations officials confirmed Gbagbo was being held by Ouattara’s forces.
“The nightmare has ended,” Ouattara’s Prime Minister Guillaume Soro said on Ouattara’s TCI television channel.
