20110411
reuters

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by opposition forces on Monday after French troops closed in on the compound where the self-proclaimed president had been holed up in a bunker for the past week.

A column of more than 30 French armoured vehicles moved in on Gbagbo's residence in Abidjan after helicopter gunships attacked the compound overnight to end a drawn-out political standoff that had descended into civil war.

Gbagbo refused to step down when Alassane Ouattara won November's presidential election, according to results certified by the United Nations, reigniting violence that has claimed more than a thousand lives and uprooted a million people.

"Yes, he has been arrested," Affoussy Bamba, a spokeswoman for Ouattara, told Reuters. Gbagbo's spokesman, Ahoua Don Mello, said: "President Laurent Gbagbo came out of his bunker and surrendered to the French without offering resistance."

Gbagbo's arrest marked the end of his 10 years in power in the world's leading cocoa-growing nation, but while Ouattara will assume the presidency has claimed for the last four months after a disputed election, he will still have to confront longstanding ethnic divisions, years of economic stagnation and a worsening humanitarian crisis.

French officials said Gbagbo had been arrested by Ouattara's forces backed by the United Nations and the French military. They said French forces had not carried out the arrest.

"Just after 3 o'clock, the ex-president Laurent Gbagbo handed himself over to the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. At no moment did French forces enter either the garden or the residence of Gbagbo," French armed forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard said.

However, his arrest seems unlikely to draw a line under the conflict.