Ivory Coast - Mobs Attack UN Protected Camp For Civilians

Angry mobs set fire to a U.N.-guarded camp for civilians forced from their homes in western Ivory Coast on Friday, killing three people, according to one witness, in an apparent revenge attack for a nearby overnight robbery.

The Nahibly camp holds 5,000 Ivorians who fled their homes during last year's civil war and is near the town of Duekoue where a police official said five people were killed in a robbery on Thursday night.

"This morning, something like 3,000 people descended on the Nahibly camp to look for their goods and search for the thieves, and they set fire to the camp, starting with the health centre," Ann Encontre, head of the U.N. refugee arm UNHCR in Ivory Coast said by telephone.

A source at the main hospital in Duekoue said at least 20 people had arrived with injuries from the camp attack.

Camp resident Murielle Kape, who was at a bus station, among scores trying to flee the violence, said she saw three dead.

"(They) arrived this morning and started to chase us from the camp and set it on fire. They killed three people in front of my eyes, and so I fled with my son," she said by telephone.

The camp, the country's only remaining facility for those displaced by last year's war, is managed by the UNHCR and partner agencies. A detachment of armed peacekeepers from Ivory Coast's U.N. peacekeeping mission, UNOCI, was deployed outside Nahibly to protect the camp's residents.

Officials from the U.N. mission contacted by Reuters said they were not able to comment on the events.