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Soldiers loyal to
Cote d’Ivoire rival presidential claimants, Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane
Ouattara, waged a gun battle in Abidjan on Thursday, and witnesses said
at least four people had been killed in street protests.

Separately
pro-Ouattara rebels and government army forces exchanged fire across
the north-south line of a country split in two by a 2002-2003 civil
war, and whose divisions a November 28 presidential election was
intended to heal.

A spokesman for the
pro-Ouattara New Forces rebels said there had been two deaths on their
side in the gun battle near the Golf Hotel, where Ouattara is under
protection of U.N. peacekeepers, while the army has confirmed only two
wounded.

The incidents
marked a sharp escalation in violence between the two camps since the
incumbent Gbagbo claimed victory in the election the United Nations and
others say Ouattara won. They came as Ouattara supporters marched
through the country’s main city to try and seize the premises of the
state broadcaster.

“I saw four killed
and many wounded. They fired guns to push us back when we tried to
march down the street,” one protester said of live rounds fired by the
military at a crowd marching near a military police school on their way
to the state TV building.

Telephone
interviews conducted by Amnesty International with people at the scene
of the march indicated there were nine dead, the rights group said. It
said the interviews were with five pro-Ouattara protesters and two
local human rights workers.

Guillaume Soro,
Gbagbo’s ex-premier who has defected to Ouattara’s camp, said 14
demonstrators had been killed during the protests. An army spokesman
declined to comment on the reports.

Across town, bursts
of heavy fire rang out around the lagoon-side hotel where Ouattara and
his allies have set up a parallel administration as a tense days-long
stand-off with pro-Gbagbo forces deployed outside turned into a gun
battle.

“There is shooting
all over the place. There is artillery. There are explosions. It is all
coming from the direction of the Golf Hotel,” said one witness.

The U.S. Embassy in
Abidjan was hit by an errant rocket-propelled grenade during the
protests, a State Department spokesman said in Washington.

Fear of a
disruption to supplies in the world’s top cocoa grower pushed futures
prices close to four-month highs reached last week. May cocoa on Liffe
stood 11 pounds or 0.55 percent higher at 2,023 pounds a tonne at 1600
GMT.

The fighting in
Abidjan was mirrored elsewhere as New Forces troops and government
troops exchanged heavy arms fire for some three hours in Tiebissou, the
central town that marks the line between the rebel-held north and
government-held south.

Along with the
United Nations, the United States, African states, and France recognise
Ouattara as the winner of the election but Gbagbo, backed by the
nation’s top legal body, has held on to the presidency, alleging mass
vote-rigging.

U.N. helicopters
flew over the city as the shooting erupted. The United Nations has
about 10,000 soldiers and police in the country. The force has a
mandate to protect civilians, but said its job was not to protect the
march.

In the Nigerian
capital, Abuja, a top-level African Union delegation met Nigerian
President, Goodluck Jonathan, current chief of the West African bloc
ECOWAS, to discuss the crisis.

A statement issued
afterwards reaffirmed the backing of both bodies for Ouattara and said
the AU had agreed with the ECOWAS view that a power-sharing deal
similar that reached by Kenya after disputed 2007 elections would not
be acceptable.

Election commission
results showed Ouattara won last month’s election. But the pro-Gbagbo
Constitutional Council scrapped nearly half a million votes in Ouattara
bastions to hand victory to Gbagbo on grounds of fraud, causing
international outrage.

Ouattara’s allies
have called on Ivorians to come out onto the streets again on Friday to
help them occupy other key government buildings, raising the risk of
further unrest.

“Some of this might
be sending messages,” one Abidjan-based diplomat said. “The key will be
whether they call off tomorrow’s demonstration. It is not tenable.”