Three people were killed in the bombing, they were about ten meters from the city hall. One of the people killed was a Nigerian, I didn’t know the others. That was the first time the helicopter came to Vavoua, but I heard that it also went to small villages like Pélézi and Monoko Zohi.60 Eyewitness descriptions of other helicopter attacks on other villages indicated that these attacks were clearly indiscriminate in their targeting of civilians. Three attacks on Pélézi, Dania, and Mahapleu resulted in the deaths of at least nineteen civilians, and these attacks represent only a fraction of the total civilian casualties from helicopter attacks. An attack on Mahapleu, which took place in late-December as the rebel and loyalists forces were fighting for control of Man, was a clear example of the type of indiscriminate bombing taking place. Mahapleu is a small town on the main road fifty-three kilometers east of Man in the direction of Danané. Many people who fled Danané and Man towards the borders with Guinea and Liberia passed Mahapleu on their way out. A twenty-eight-year-old Ivorian driver who had witnessed the helicopter attacks on Danané, was searching for his family in Mahapleu on the day of the attack. It was a Wednesday, which is market day in Mahapleu. It was about 1 p.m…. We were walking west…when we heard the helicopter coming from the direction of Man. It flew very low towards the market. The market is just along the big road to Man, and many people in the market came out to look…. We ran in the other direction. It was about sixty or eighty meters from the market when it fired. It fired twice in the direction of the market, with rockets that came out sideways. One of them hit the road and broke the road up into pieces. Some people died from that, from being hit by pieces of the road, rather than from the bomb. Then the helicopter flew into Mahapleu town. It went into the town and bombed the mosque and destroyed it. There were rebels in the village, but they were at the checkpoints outside, along the road, not in the market…. I helped bury the dead from the helicopter attack. We buried five people that day. There were two young Mossi men, two Dioula: a young man and a girl about thirteen-years-old, and one Yacouba woman who ran a maquis in the market. The next day, three more were found dead, under the stalls in the market. They must have been injured and died while trying to get away. I saw the bodies but I didn’t help to bury them. Two were young girls. One had been hit in the back of the head and the other in the stomach. They were covered in blood and so swollen it was hard to tell their ages. The third was a boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. I left and spent the night at an encampment in the bush…there was another woman there who had been hurt in the helicopter attack, she died in the bush that night.61 There are also indications that in some of the aerial attacks, there may have been deliberate targeting of areas where foreigners were known to reside. For instance, in Pélézi, where there was already friction between the indigenous Niédéboua and the immigrant population, the Niédéboua were allegedly warned by the loyalist forces of the impending aerial attack in a letter. A forty-six-year-old Burkinabé farmer who had a close friend among the Niédéboua described the first aerial attack on Pélézi as follows: The loyalist forces gave the Niédéboua villagers a letter, saying that they would bomb the village. My Niédéboua friend and his family left Pélézi after that. The first bombing came at the end of November. An airplane came about 11 or 12 a.m. and circled above Pélézi three times. The rebels fired at it. Later that day a large helicopter came at about 5 p.m. It circled, the rebels fired at it, then it dropped bombs on the foreign quartier and shot around the Socampart store, near the market. It did not touch the Niédéboua quartier. The helicopter dropped nine bombs which left craters about one metre wide and deep. Five people were killed, others were injured. It was evening so many people were at home. Three Baoulé children (two girls and one boy, all under fifteen-years-old) were killed when one of the bombs dropped in the courtyard of their home. Their bodies were completely destroyed by the bomb. A Burkinabé man 60 Human Rights Watch interview, Bobo-Dioulasso, February 8, 2003. 61 Human Rights Watch interview, Guinea, March 1, 2003. Human Rights Watch 21 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)