At least five dead in Ivory Coast attack

At least five people were killed on Sunday when heavily-armed gunmen opened fire in the Ivory Coast resort town of Grand-Bassam, leaving bodies strewn on the beach. "At the moment there are five dead," a military source said on condition of anonymity after the assault in the resort popular with Westerners.

Some of the attackers' weapons.

An AFP photographer said he saw seven bodies on the beach and another in the Etoile du Sud (Southern Star) hotel, one of the establishments attacked in the former colonial capital.

It is the third major attack on a tourism centre in a West African country since November. The other attacks have been in Mali and Burkina Faso.

A witness told AFP they heard one of the attackers shouting "Allahu akbar" Arabic for "God is greatest".

The assailants, who were "heavily armed and wearing balaclavas, fired at guests at the L'Etoile du Sud, a large hotel which was full of expats in the current heatwave," another witness told AFP.




It was not immediately clear who was behind the shooting in the resort, which lies on the Gulf of Guinea around 40km east of the commercial hub Abidjan. "We were on the beach, we heard the gunshots and we saw people fleeing - we understood this was an attack," witness Braman Kinda told AFP, showing photos of seven bodies lying on the beach including that of at least one woman.

Kinda said four attackers had "roamed the beach firing shots". Abbas El-Roz, a Lebanese national who was staying at the Etoile du Sud, said he one of the attackers had a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a grenade belt.

At least one assailant was killed, several witnesses reported. Another witness called Kouamena Kakou Bertin said three others fled on foot via a nearby road. "Search operations are continuing, the hotel has been secured," a police source told AFP.