near where I was and stopped, noticing the boy lying on top of me was still breathing. I was trying desperately to control my breathing so they wouldn't notice me. It was when they were finishing him off that I was hit. [He was shot once in the arm.] Then I heard one of them saying, ‘Let's burn all the bodies,’ and another said, ‘No, they're all dead.’ And then I heard the truck and jeeps leaving. I lay there, and after a few minutes saw someone get up from the pile of bodies. There were a few more who started saying, ‘Help us, help us.’ But they were dying and fell silent shortly after. Another survivor, one of eight youths captured and forced to load the dead and wounded onto a gendarme truck, described his capture and subsequent experience:55 I was in my house at around 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 26 when a friend came to visit me. We talked a while and I decided to walk him home. By this time it was calm and the riots from the morning had quieted down. As we were walking he suggested we go visit another friend, who lived close by in an area of Abobo called Gros Pine [big tire] which we did. There, several of us, all in the same compound, were drinking tea and listening to music. We were eight all together. All of us are Ivorian. Suddenly we saw five gendarmes storm into the compound. One of them came directly into our room, and about five others stayed near the door. They asked for our IDs, which we showed them, and then the boss ordered us to come outside and sit down. I heard one of the gendarmes ask if we were all Dioula, and we said yes. They were all armed, with pistols, long guns and at least one had a machine gun with bandoliers wrapped around his shoulders. Then we were made to strip and they walked the eight of us out of the courtyard and into the street in a line—we were all completely naked; there were two gendarmes in front and two in back. As we were led away our mothers and sisters were crying and begging for them to leave us. Some of our neighbors were smirking, laughing. It’s about a ten-minute walk to their camp, Camp Commando, and as we were getting close the gendarme with the bandoliers said, ‘you’ll soon see the Dioula we’ve already killed and we’re going to kill you too.’ Also as we were walking they stopped at another house along the way—I didn’t know the owner—and asked a man inside for his ID but he wasn’t a Dioula so they didn’t take him. As we walked into Camp Commando, there was another group of about four or five young men, also totally nude, who were being led into the camp by another group of gendarmes. When we entered the camp, in the courtyard just after the entrance, on the left we saw a lot of wounded all lying on top of each other; maybe twenty or so. A lot were totally naked, others had no shirts on. We heard groans and cries; many didn’t really move. And straight ahead of the entrance lined up were the dead all lying side by side; some were on their backs, some on stomachs, some totally naked and some with no shirts. I can’t tell how many there were but they were at least fifteen. After seeing this, a group of gendarmes told the ones who’d brought us to take us out to the back. They made us lie down on our stomachs. While lying down a group of gendarmes who were different from the ones who captured us started to beat us. When lying down on our stomachs and in the middle of these beatings, a gendarme who I think was also a boss said ‘the job is not yet done’ and screaming like he was angry said, ‘you killed one of our colleagues.’ This is the only time he said this. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then…after the beating, by this time it was around 5:00 p.m., I just heard a voice—I didn’t see a face because we were lying face down—telling us to get up and then a few gendarmes walked us to where the bodies were. Then one of them said, ‘pick up the bodies’ and we were made to 55 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 10, 2000. Human Rights Watch 31 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)