Death toll in Ivorian post - election violence surpassed 1000 – UN

UN officials said here on Friday that the post-election violence that began last December in Cote d'Ivoire had killed more than 1,000 people in the western part of the country before it came to an end last month.

The officials made the statement on the basis of a report from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cote d'Ivoire (UNOCI).

According to the report, 103 of the 1,012 slain persons were women and 42 were children.

Guillaume Ngefa, the interim head of UNOCI's Human Rights Division, said the tally was the result of an investigation by a team of UN experts covering the period from December 2010 to April 2011.

At least 505 of the victims were killed in the western city of Duekoue, he said.

The violence erupted last December when former president Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after he lost the UN-certified presidential run-off election in November to Alassane Ouattara. Ouattara was sworn in earlier this month after Gbagbo surrendered in April.

Earlier this month, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR) reported that despite the end of the post-electoral crisis, the humanitarian situation in Cote d'Ivoire remained "alarming" for tens of thousands of civilians.

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