come running out. I later heard people crying and learned one of the girls and a Nigerian man had been killed. After this we all fled the neighborhood until things calmed down. I don’t know why the gendarmes did all this. I’d heard that a gendarme had been killed at the roundabout between 8:00 and 9:00 or so in the morning and maybe it was in retaliation. All I know is that I lost 6 million CFA [U.S.$8,570] in the fire. The seventeen-year-old sister of a two-year-old Nigerian girl who was killed when an explosive device fell into their compound on December 5, 2000, described what happened and how the gendarmes later impeded the evacuation of the wounded:97 From around 6:00 a.m. the youths had started moving up and down skirmishing with the gendarmes. Then around 8:00 a.m. we heard that a gendarme had been killed by one of the marchers. The thing became much more serious after that. There was a lot of gunfire. Then five minutes later our own problem started. We were all in our beds; my mother was lying down with my little sister and I was sitting on my own bed. At around 8:45 a.m. a tear gas bomb was fired inside our compound. We started choking and coughing and then suddenly there was a huge explosion, a crashing sound and white smoke everywhere. There was blood everywhere, we were cut up all over; my sister was bleeding heavily from the head and from her stomach. My mother was hit on the head and all over her legs and back. There was a big hole in our roof where the bomb dropped and the iron bits went everywhere. Shortly after the incident we tried to take them to the hospital but the gendarmes refused us permission. Shortly after 9:00 a.m. a gendarme who was passing by as we opened the door, came up to us agitated and yelling. My father’s first wife tried to tell the gendarme we had wounded who needed to go to the hospital. This gendarme just asked her if she had matches. I don’t know what he was going to use them for. She insisted saying, “please we need your help, we have wounded who need to go to hospital,” but he refused and threatened to kill her if she insisted. The same gendarme came back three times asking for matches and threatening us. We told them we were Nigerian and had nothing to do with all the troubles. They knew we had wounded but they wouldn’t let us out. And all the time my sister and mom were getting worse and worse. We weren’t able to take them to hospital until 2:00 p.m. My little sister died shortly after we arrived. These bombs are things they use in war—is it war they’re waging on us? Several medical personnel described how the RDR wounded were refused treatment within the University Center Hospital of Yopougon, which is located less than 500 meters from where the December 5, 2000, clashes occurred. An ambulance driver described the scene and how guards and gendarmes refused them entry:98 They told us they’d received orders not to open the door. We spent over two hours trying to convince them to open the door. We tried to explain the principle of neutrality and that any wounded had a right to receive treatment. Finally at around noon, they allowed us to enter. Once inside I heard a few nurses comment that they weren’t going to treat any RDR militants. Inside we found scores of wounded, almost all by bullet and they hadn’t been properly attended to. We spent the next few hours going back and forth, evacuating them to other hospitals willing to treat them. 97 98 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 11, 2001. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 11 and March 9, 2001. Human Rights Watch 52 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)