EX-IVORYCOAST LEADER'S PARTY ACCUSES GOVERNMENT OF TERRORIST ATTACKS ON HQ AND OPPOSITION NEWSPAPERS OFFICES

Former Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo's party accused the government of current President Alassane Ouattara on Wednesday of sponsoring an armed attack on its headquarters last weekend.

"It's the government that is the sponsor of this violence on Saturday," Laurent Akoun, the secretary general of Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), told a press conference.
Armed men attacked the party's offices Saturday, abducting two people and wounding three. The FPI blamed the attack on supporters of Ouattara, Gbagbo's rival in a post-election crisis that plunged the country into violent chaos from December 2010 to April 2011 and claimed 3,000 lives.
Ouattara's party, the Rally of Republicans (RDR), denied the accusation and condemned the attack.
Akoun said the government was responsible for the disappearance of the two FPI youth members kidnapped in the attack, accusing Ouattara's administration of "totalitarian excesses" and retaliation against the party.
He also called for the immediate release of former minister Alphonse Douati, FPI deputy secretary general, who was arrested Saturday and has been charged with violating state security.
Saturday's attack heightened tensions in Abidjan, the country's economic capital, after a recent series of attacks against the army that the government has wrongly blamed on the main opposition party FPI.
Source: AFP