Ivory Coast warlord ‘beaten and shot dead’

Felix Anoble confirmed that photographs posted on the internet of a bloody-faced man with an apparent bullet wound to the heart showed 47-year-old Coulibaly, after he was killed on Wednesday night.

A commander for defence minister Guillaume Soro had claimed Coulibaly appeared to have killed himself rather than surrender when troops seized Coulibaly’s stronghold in Abidjan.

Mr Anoble denied Coulibaly had committed suicide.

“Did you not see the photograph?” he asked. “That’s him. His face is all swollen because they beat him badly before delivering the final shot.”

Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara, whom Coulibaly had said he considered “a father” has expressed his regrets at the death of Coulibaly, his wife’s one-time bodyguard.

Mr Anoble said he was killed after his troops were attacked while waiting for United Nations peacekeepers to arrive and disarm them.

UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, speaking from New York, said the United Nations had negotiated a peace meeting and sent a patrol to escort Coulibaly. But when it arrived “Mr Coulibaly changed his mind and refused to come”.

Mr Haq said Coulibaly was attacked after the peacekeepers left.

Mr Ouattara also announced that he would be inaugurated on May 21 in the administrative capital of Yamoussoukro.

He won a November presidential poll but was unable to take command because strongman Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power, plunging the West African nation into four months of chaos.

Mr Ouattara had ordered Coulibaly and his forces to disarm or expect to have weapons seized by force.

Coulibaly said that disarming would take time to organise.

The November 28 elections were supposed to reunite the country, but Mr Gbagbo’s refusal to accept defeat precipitated more violence in a country in conflict for a decade.

Thousands are believed to have been killed.