Marcel Legré had just returned from a night shift at La Refondation Printing Press, printers of the pro-Gbagbo newspaper "Notre Voie".
(MFWA/IFEX) – Marcel Legré, a machine operator at La Refondation Printing Press, printers of “Notre Voie”, a pro-Gbagbo newspaper, was in the afternoon of 28 February 2011 violently killed by alleged pro-Ouattara militants during an armed confrontation in the town of Koumassi, in the centre of the country.
The Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent reported that machete-wielding militants from the Rally of Houphouétistes for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) stormed Legré’s home after he returned from a night shift on 27 February.
According to the 1 March issue of “Notre Voie”, after attacking Legre the militants dragged him to a location a few metres away from his home close to a pharmacist’s shop, where they inflicted machete wounds to his head and the rest of his body until he was finally killed. The attackers then abandoned his body in the embers of tires they had set on fire.
The newspaper alleged that Legré was murdered because he worked for La Refondation.
In another development, broadcast transmissions at the state-owned Ivorian Broadcasting Corporation (RTI) were interrupted throughout the country, and especially in the Abidjan district, after clashes between pro-Gbagbo and pro-Ouattara forces resulted in a fire that destroyed equipment at the station’s transmission centre at Abobo, in the north of the capital.
