MPIGO rebels learned that their leader, Felix Doh, had been killed the night before by foreign fighters who had laid an ambush for him. The MPCI had issued a statement saying Doh had been captured and executed in an ambush by Liberian soldiers fighting for the Ivorian government and by armed groups from Sierra Leone. The MPCI leader said that Doh's body and his bullet-riddled car had been found by rebel fighters during a mopping-up operation, following fighting with foreign forces resisting the attempts to disarm them.
Doh, who represented MPIGO at Ivory Coast peace talks in France in January, had a conversation with French journalists by satellite telephone that same day. He claimed that about a dozen of his bodyguards had been killed in Danane and his house ransacked during an attack by Sierra Leonean fighters. He also claimed to have been outside the Ivory Coast, in western Europe.
In the week prior, there had been incidents as MPCI rebels began an operation to disarm and repatriate Liberian combatants who had fought on their side. - Adam Geibel