Arms transfers fuel instability in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — External arms transfers that played a pivotal role in Ivory Coast’s decade-long political crisis continue to fuel instability and human rights abuses, Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday.

The group documented transfers involving arms traffickers both before and after the United Nations Security Council placed the West African nation under an arms embargo in November 2004. These weapons were then used in violence stemming from Ivory Coast’s protracted political crisis, which led to a five-month conflict that claimed more than 3,000 lives following the November 2010 presidential election, the report said.