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State television said Wednesday night that the renegade warlord Ibrahim Coulibaly, a two-time coup plotter who began the pro-democracy battle for Abidjan, died during fighting with onetime allies turned enemies.
A senior commander for Defense Minister Guillaume Soro said Mr. Coulibaly, a self-styled general, appeared to have killed himself rather than surrender when government troops seized his stronghold in the poor Abidjan neighborhood of Abobo. The senior commander spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Chief Sergeant Ibrahim Coulibaly has been killed this evening during fighting with the F.R.C.I.,” or Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, state television announced in a late-night headline running at the bottom of the screen.
But the senior commander who directed the fighting against Mr. Coulibaly said it appeared to be a suicide.
“Our men surrounded his residence but he refused to surrender,” the commander said. “When our fighters got access, they found his body, lifeless but with no bullet wound.”
A spokesman for Mr. Coulibaly’s fighters, Felix Anoble, said earlier Wednesday that they were under attack in Abobo while they were waiting for United Nations peacekeepers to come to disarm them.
On Friday, President Alassane Ouattara ordered Mr. Coulibaly and his forces to disarm or expect to have weapons seized by force. Mr. Coulibaly said the disarming would take time to organize. He pledged his allegiance to the new president, in an interview with The Associated Press, but he was not received by Mr. Ouattara.
Brig. Gen. Michel Gueu, the military adviser to Mr. Soro, who is also the prime minister, said Tuesday that he met with a Coulibaly delegation to advise them to disarm, adding that it was a prerequisite to meeting with the two leaders.
Mr. Coulibaly had said Mr. Ouattara was “like a father,” since he led the bodyguard of Mr. Ouattara’s wife from 1990 to 1993, when he was an army chief sergeant and Mr. Ouattara was prime minister.
On Monday, Mr. Coulibaly’s aides accused Mr. Soro’s camp of attacking their forces. The two men had a longtime feud. In 2004, Mr. Soro and Mr. Coulibaly waged bloody battles for leadership in the rebels’ stronghold in the central city of Bouake. Mr. Soro won, and Mr. Coulibaly was forced into exile.
The rivalry between Mr. Soro and Mr. Coulibaly was the biggest challenge to confront Mr. Ouattara’s government since Laurent Gbagbo, the former president, was arrested April 11. Mr. Ouattara defeated Mr. Gbagbo in a presidential election last year, but Mr. Gbagbo refused to step down.
Mr. Ouattara has little control over the former rebel forces that brought him to power and that will form the new Ivorian army by integrating with Mr. Gbagbo’s old forces. The former rebels grouped loosely under Mr. Soro are commanded by five different warlords.
Mr. Coulibaly re-emerged in Abidjan in January at the head of a force called the Invisible Commando to start the battle against Mr. Gbagbo’s forces after soldiers fired mortar shells and rockets into Abobo, a neighborhood that voted heavily for Mr. Ouattara.
The Nov. 28 elections were supposed to reunite the country, but Mr. Gbagbo’s stubborn refusal to accept his defeat precipitated the most recent violence in a West African country in conflict for a decade. It is not known how many thousands have been killed and wounded.
Mr. Ouattara’s government has appealed for residents to return to their normal lives.
Late Tuesday, Mr. Ouattara’s government announced preliminary investigations into Mr. Gbagbo and his family.
NYT
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