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AP - The International Criminal Court charged former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo with murder, rape, persecution and inhuman acts Wednesday, crimes allegedly committed as his backers fought brutal battles to keep him in power after last year’s elections. Gbagbo, 66, is the first former head of state taken into custody by the court since it was established in 2002, although prosecutors also have charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with genocide and Libya’s former leader, the late Moammar Gadhafi, with crimes against humanity. “Mr. Gbagbo is brought to account for his individual responsibility in the attacks against civilians committed by...

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for ousted Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, his France-based lawyer said on Tuesday. "They (Ivorian justice authorities) showed it to him this morning,"

(Reuters) - French special forces have detained Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo and handed him to leaders of the rebel opposition, after French tanks forced their way into his residence, a Gbagbo adviser in France said.

French ground troops have entered the centre of the main Ivory Coast city of Abidjan for the fist time as incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo refuses to quit. Helicopter gunships are firing in the area around Mr Gbagbo's residence. On Sunday, UN and French helicopter gunships began a new operation they said was aimed at destroying heavy weapons near Mr Gbagbo's residence. Mr Gbagbo has been refusing to cede power to internationally-recognised President Alassane Ouattara. Loud explosions can be heard echoing around the lagoons which surround the centre of the city, says the BBC's Mark Doyle in Abidjan. On Monday morning,...

France has announced that talks for Gbagbo's surrender has failed, and forces loyalty to president elect Alassane Ouattara Wednesday mounted intense attack on the compound of the former president who remained in denial over a lost cause. President Ouattara is reported to be determined not to grant Gbagbo his apparent wish of becoming a martyr by having him killed in the process of forcing him out of hiding... The latest dreadlock came after Gbagbo refused to sign a UN document acknowledging the internationally recognised Ouattara as president of Ivory Coast... Gbagbo's three main generals also reportedly offered to the UN...

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – French forces wearing night vision goggles rappelled from a helicopter to rescue the Japanese ambassador and seven others, France's foreign minister said Thursday, as Ivory Coast's strongman leader remained in an underground bunker amid the fighting.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé says that incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo is negotiating his departure from the Ivory Coast after months of refusing to cede power following a November presidential run-off. No more at the moment.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – A senior diplomat says forces backing Ivory Coast's democratically elected leader have seized the presidential home where the entrenched strongman is in a bunker. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Tuesday that fighters had taken the residence. Forces aiming to topple strongman Laurent Gbagbo had succeeded in taking nearly the entire countryside in just three days last week.

Soldiers backing Ivory Coast's defiant leader mowed down women protesting his refusal to leave power in a hail of gunfire on Thursday, killing at least six and shocking a nation where women's marches have historically been used as a last resort against an unrestrained army. Because the president's security force has shown almost no reserve in opening fire on unarmed civilians, the women decided this week to organize the march in the nation's commercial capital, assuming soldiers would be too ashamed to open fire. But at least six of the thousands of women demonstrating Thursday were killed on the spot,...

/snip Lanny J Davis, a lawyer who used to work for Bill Clinton, has resigned from his job advising Mr Gbagbo, claiming that the president had stopped taking his calls, and refused one from the US president. Mr Davis said he had repeatedly tried to set up a phone conversation between Mr Gbagbo and Mr Obama which would have given the Ivorian "options for a peaceful resolution, that would avoid further bloodshed and be in the best interests of his country". "Unfortunately, the decision was made in Abidjan not to allow President Obama's call to be put through to Mr...

PARIS - Didier Julia, the French lawmaker a reporter taken hostage in Iraq called for by name in a video released by her abductors, is seen as a maverick member of President Jacques Chirac's ruling party -- and someone with close ties to Syria and the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein. The 71-year-old representative of the Seine-et-Marne region outside Paris first rose to prominence last September, when he headed an unofficial -- and unsuccessful -- mission to free two other French reporters kidnapped in Iraq. The failure of that venture, conducted from a luxury hotel suite in the Syrian capital...

PARIS (AFP) - Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has dismissed as "an insult" comments by French President Jacques Chirac that France will continue its UN-mandated action in the troubled west African nation and will not stand by while a situation of anarchy or fascism develops. "President Chirac supported the only party in Ivory Coast for 40 years. What is closer to fascism than a one-party system? We were in prison under the regime of the sole party supported by France. It's an insult," Gbagbo said in an interview published Monday in the Liberation daily here. Referring to the recent incident...

Lettre ouverte à Kofi Annan H.E. Kofi Annan Secretary General of the United Nations United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017 Fax: 212 963-1921 Dear Secretary General, I am writing to you as an American of Ivorian origin to express my deep concern, and indeed the deep concern of many in the Ivorian community in the US, over the violent attacks of France on Côte d’Ivoire and its civilian population, and the seeming acquiescence of the world body you run in the French action. France claims that it destroyed the Ivorian Airforce, Government buildings and other structures, and fired on...

It was no simple matter, in the midst of mob demonstrations and machete attacks on foreigners in Ivory Coast last week, for a Westerner to keep an appointment with President Laurent Gbagbo. An armed escort picked me up at a central hotel in Abidjan, the commercial capital of this west African state, and drove me to the president's residence Remnants of the demonstrations were everywhere: abandoned road blocks, burnt-out cars - and young militants loyal to Mr Gbagbo, slumped on the ground after days in protective vigil outside the residence. It was here last Saturday that Mr Gbagbo was sitting...

...Simmering tensions broke into the open Saturday when nine French peacekeeping soldiers were killed in an Ivorian government air raid. The French were enforcing a nearly two-year-old ceasefire between northern Muslim rebels and the Christian-dominated government in Abidjan, on the southern coast. President Laurent Gbagbo's spokesman called the bombing a "mistake," but it looked, and worked, like a tailor-made provocation. Paris had no choice but to retaliate so it attacked and destroyed the state's tiny air force. French troops "occupied," if we may use that word, the two biggest airports. As if on cue, Mr. Gbagbo's lieutenants incited anti-French sentiment...

ABIDJAN (AFP) - Armed men wearing army uniforms interrupted Ivory's Coast national TV to demand the resignation of the army chief and that French peacekeepers leave the troubled country within 48 hours. The men, who said they were soldiers speaking on behalf of the west African state's entire armed forces, insisted that "this is not a coup d'etat." They said they were responding to events in which scores of pro-government protestors and soldiers skirmished Saturday with French troops policing a demilitarized zone separating the south from the rebel-held north. The announcement on national TV -- and a similar attempt reportedly...

France began reinforcing its garrison in Ivory Coast yesterday as thousands of workers took to the streets of Abidjan, the commercial capital, in a protest against a Paris-brokered peace deal. About 600 extra French troops were on their way, mainly to protect the 16,000 expatriates living in Abidjan after a wave of anti-French riots. The violence was triggered by a peace deal brokered by Paris which Christian southerners see as a sell-out to the rebel groups whose forces control most key towns in the north. Angry demonstrators again gathered around the French embassy in Abidjan amid a sea of orange,...

French troops were called in to secure the airport The newly appointed prime minister of Ivory Coast has been forced to delay his return to the country because of unrest at the country's main airport. Seydou Diarra was obliged to remain in Senegal where West African leaders have been discussing the deal reached in Paris. Crowds of demonstrators opposed to a peace deal stormed the terminal building and runway in Abidjan on Friday. One French soldier was seriously hurt as forces intervened to contain stone-throwing crowds heckling some 300 French citizens waiting to leave the country. France - the...

<p>ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Leading political figures renounced a days-old peace plan for Ivory Coast - one called it ''null and void'' - and hundreds of French nationals fled the country, fearing more anti-French violence over the accord.</p> <p>In Paris, French authorities declared themselves ready for a full-scale evacuation of their citizens, targeted by enraged progovernment rioters who say the French-brokered plan to end civil war gives too much power to rebels.</p>