San Pedro, Ivory Coast - Hundreds of terrified villagers are fleeing Ivory Coast's western border region to escape attacks by anti-government rebels, abandoning their homes and their rich cocoa crop.

Residents in the main border town of Tabou said on Saturday more villagers were flooding in there as rebels punched across the Liberian border this week to broaden their front along a 185km stretch of wild, densely forested territory.

Red Cross workers said by Friday more than 200 displaced people from the battle-torn village of Neka had made it to the major cocoa port of San Pedro, some 200km away - most carrying nothing but their own children.

"We saw rebels killing people in Neka when we arrived in the village to take the cocoa beans with our truck," said Paul Koffi, a member of the Coopegra cocoa co-operative.

"They fired into the air, some looted the shops. We turned back straight away to take the track through the bush."

The world's biggest cocoa producer, once a bulwark of stability, is now torn along ethnic lines by a civil war that began with a failed coup on September 19. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands driven from their homes.

Residents said on Saturday that Grabo, another border village 45km south of Neka, had not yet been attacked but had become a virtual ghost town.

"There's nobody around," said one cocoa buyer who gave his name as Lamine. "Farmers left the cocoa in their houses and fled into the bush to Tabou or San Pedro when they heard the automatic and heavy weapons."

Even in Tabou, on the coast some 30km from the border with Liberia, residents said on Saturday that many shops remained firmly shuttered for fear of attack. The main petrol station has been shut for three days.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2003

Answers

The town is 100km from San Pedro along a main road, and cocoa buyers said villagers had set up numerous roadblocks to try to stop any rebel advance towards the port.

Intervention force

San Pedro, which ships a fifth of the world's cocoa beans and provides a base for many foreign firms and factories, is shielded by a contingent of crack French troops.

They are part of a 2 500-strong intervention force sent by the former colonial power to protect foreign residents and police a shaky ceasefire between the government and the main rebel group in the north.

But the western rebels do not consider themselves bound by the truce. The two allied western factions seized Neka on Wednesday, and battle continued to rage there on Friday.

The villagers escaped along forest tracks linking their remote plantations to the main road. Some arrived in San Pedro by truck, others on foot.

"Everybody tried to flee Neka but rebels are everywhere, they know the bush perfectly and when they see you, they shoot," said Koffi, as other displaced people nodded in agreement.

Most have fled with empty hands, children on their backs, and few have had time to bring bags and bowls.

"They don't have anything," one Red Cross worker said.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2003