Zwedru, Liberia---In February last year a gang of men with machetes ambushed two villages in western Ivory Coast, disemboweling a soldier and pulling out most of his organs before slaying three of his colleagues.
The attack marked the brutal resumption of a campaign of violence blamed on militants crossing from Liberia that has displaced thousands and claimed dozens of lives in the border area.
Experts have warned that the violence could intensify in the months ahead of presidential elections due to take place in Ivory Coast in October.
The crisis was ignited by former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to accept election defeat to Alassane Ouattara in 2010, leading to a four-month conflict that claimed some 3,000 lives.
Thousands of Gbagbo's supporters fled the far west, which was hit particularly hard, across the 700-kilometre (435-mile) border into neighbouring Liberia when he was captured in April 2011.
Observers say the pro-Gbagbo political elites, now mostly in Ghana or elsewhere in west Africa, are funding incursions into western Ivory Coast by Liberian mercenaries and Ivorians recruited in Liberia's refugee camps.
The cross-border violence saw a significant spike in 2012 that saw more than 40 people killed.
In the worst incident, seven United Nations troops from Niger, 10 civilians and at least one Ivorian soldier were killed while patrolling villages south of the town of Tai.
Thirteen Liberian nationals were jailed for life but critics dismissed the trial as a witch hunt against the Krahn -- the ethnicity of former president Samuel Doe who was assassinated in 1990, sparking 14 years of civil war.
Oldman James, a Liberian living in Zwedru, a provincial capital near the border, claims to have taken part in the ambush but says he has never been pursued.
AFP
