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