Police in Ivory Coast had carried out summary executions...

Police in Ivory Coast had carried out summary executions and made arbitrary arrests following an anti-government demonstration in the country on March 25, Amnesty International said. Amnesty said it had also collected evidence of a mass grave near Yopougon on the outskirts of the commercial capital Abidjan where witnesses claimed to have seen "numerous corpses which had been taken away by security forces to an unknown destination".
"Other witnesses reported seeing suspicious traces of blood at the entrance to a rubbish dump at Akouedo, a district of Abidjan, after the military buried the contents of their vehicles on the night of Thursday, March 25," the report said.
The clashes in Abidjan left 37 people dead, according to police in Ivory Coast. But the political opposition in the troubled former French colony has said up to 500 people died when the army followed presidential orders and cracked down on the demonstration, called in defiance of a presidential ban on public protests. Amnesty said it was unable to confirm the testimony it had assembled because security forces had prevented or hindered access by independent observers, such as UN officials in Ivory Coast, to the areas concerned.