The incidence of rape appears to have increased when the three rebel groups moved into the traditionally progovernment Gueré territory around Toulepleu and Bangolo, where the rapes were sometimes, although not necessarily always, based on ethnic affiliation. A Burkinabé woman told Human Rights Watch about the rape of her twelve-year-old niece by four Yacoubaspeaking members of the rebel forces. The attack took place in a small village off the road between Bangolo and Duékoué—a largely Gueré area. Her aunt said, “They raped my niece, she was twelve years old—a little girl who didn’t even have breasts—she was crying and crying but still they took her. She couldn’t even walk afterwards.” 89 Human Rights Watch was also told of one case in which a group of young women and girls were held in sexual slavery by the Ivorian rebels. In this case, five girls and young women aged fourteen to twenty were taken from encampments around Toulepleu to a military camp on the border—from its location and the description, probably one run by the MPIGO group. The women described a small camp where approximately thirty Ivorian soldiers lived and Liberians came and went every day after receiving orders. The girls and women were held there for at least one week. During the days they washed clothes and cooked, and they were raped every night. They were threatened at gunpoint that they would be killed if they tried to escape. While the Liberian fighters clearly worked with the Ivorian rebels and even took instructions from them, they apparently lived elsewhere. 90 VII. THE ROLE OF LIBERIAN FORCES IN THE WEST Government forces fighting in the west consisted of a large number of irregular forces: mercenaries from other African and European countries, Liberian fighters, many of them loosely linked to abusive Liberian rebel groups such as the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), Liberian refugees recruited locally and internationally from refugee camps, and Ivorian Gueré civilians, many of whom were traditionally progovernment and FPI and were recruited from an existing network of village self-defense committees and youth groups transformed into militias. The rebel forces also collaborated with a number of irregular forces, the bulk of whom were Liberian and Sierra Leonean fighters, some of them linked to abusive Liberian government militias run by President Taylor.91 Some of the fighters were known veterans of the brutal wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone forces, such as indicted war criminal Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie, who was killed in May 2003 after spending several months in western Côte d’Ivoire. Others were more recent recruits from Liberia, including hundreds of child soldiers. As the war in the west intensified, the rebel groups also recruited significant numbers of local civilians, some by force. Others were drawn by the lure of loot or vengeance for the increasing cycle of ethnic abuses. This array of irregular forces working with both sides, many of whom were recruited with the promise of payment but were then given more or less of a license to loot the civilian population, was responsible for a wide range of abuses against the civilian population. Use of foreign mercenaries by the Ivorian government According to numerous eyewitness testimonies, foreign mercenaries, including nationals from African and European countries, were used as supplemental forces by the government of Côte Ivoire as early as October 2002.92 Their use in offensives on Man, Toulepleu and other locations has been documented by Human Rights 89 Human Rights Watch interview, Duékoué, April 3, 2003. 90 Human Rights Watch telephone interview, New York, June 4, 2003. 91 Human Rights Watch interview, Freetown, March 11, 2003. 92 Under international humanitarian law, mercenaries are defined as “any person who: (a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict; (b) does, in fact, take a direct part in hostilities; (c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the Human Rights Watch 29 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)