A week after the government attack, French forces visited Monoko-Zohi after receiving alarming reports from civilians displaced from the area. The French troops confirmed the existence of a mass grave reportedly containing approximately 120 bodies of mainly immigrant workers who had been living in the area.49 According to a BBC report based on a visit to Monoko Zohi and interviews with eyewitnesses on December 9, “[s]ix trucks full of men wearing Ivorian military uniforms, and with Ivorian Government license plates drove into the village, just inside rebel-held territory, and began firing in the air. Many of the villagers fled. Many of those who did not are now buried in the grave. Accusing the villagers of feeding rebels, soldiers went house-tohouse in the hamlet with a list of names, survivors alleged.” 50 An eyewitness interviewed by the BBC stated that “soldiers shot some victims where they found them, and gathered others for execution together…. Some had their throats slit.”51 The government subsequently denied that its forces were responsible for the killings, noting that the Dania area was under the control of the rebel forces at the time of the massacre. The MPCI refuted this, claiming that government was not acknowledging its attacks in the area, and claiming that the Monoko-Zohi mass grave was only discovered after an MPCI patrol visited the village on December 4.52 While the events in Monoko-Zohi require further investigation, particularly with forensic expertise, many factors point to government responsibility for the massacre. The modus operandi of the killings, which corresponds with that used by government forces in other locations, the accounts given to international journalists by eyewitnesses at the site shortly after the events, and Human Rights Watch’s own interviews with individuals who were in villages in the area, confirm the presence of government forces in the area and their collaboration with local villagers hostile to the immigrant population. These factors consistently point to the government’s armed forces as the perpetrators of the killings. Government forces recapture Man: December 1-18, 2002 A mixture of rebel forces captured Man on November 28. The government counter-attacked and succeeded in recapturing Man on November 30. The loyalist forces then held Man for at least two weeks, until the town was retaken by the rebels on December 19, 2002. Prior to the rebel capture of Man on November 28 and during the eighteen-day period in which government forces resumed control of the town, there were credible accounts of killings and “disappearances” of civilians by the government forces. An anonymous medical source in Man stated on December 9 that “about 150 bodies had been cleared from the streets of Man since it was retaken by government soldiers…. The victims included several people who had been executed.”53 However, this figure likely included the bodies of both rebel and government combatants killed in fighting as well as the bodies of civilians unintentionally killed in crossfire. Further investigation, including forensic analysis of several mass grave sites in Man, will be required to establish the identities and methods used to kill the individuals whose bodies are in the sites. Nonetheless, Human Rights Watch has documented several incidents in Man where civilians were summarily executed by government forces during the period of loyalist control of the town and fears these may be only a fraction of the real number. A twenty-year-old Ivorian youth described the loyalist re-capture of Man and the summary execution of his neighbor, a transporter named Yacouba Sylla, to Human Rights Watch. 49 Jean-Claude Kondo, “Un charnier découvert dans une zone rebelle,” le jour, December 7, 2002, p.2. 50 Joan Baxter, “Eyewitness: Ivory Coast mass grave,” British Broadcasting Corporation, December 9, 2002 at www.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa (accessed January 26, 2003). 51 Ibid. 52 MPCI declaration on Monoko-Zohi, December 6, 2002, at www.supportmpci.org/comm_archives.htm (accessed May 15, 2003). 53 “Fighting in west Ivory Coast kills at least 150: medical source,” Agence France Presse, December 9, 2002, at www.reliefweb.int (accessed January 26, 2003) Human Rights Watch 18 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)