Hundreds of people in the major western Ivory Coast cocoa town of Duekoue have fled their homes after their houses were attacked and looted by members of a rival ethnic group, residents said on Saturday. The attacks were triggered after members of the Guere community, which hails from Ivory Coast's west, returned to work on Friday despite a call for traders and transport workers to strike over security problems in the town, locals said. "A lot of Gueres had their windows and doors smashed and a lot of houses were looted," a witness told Reuters by telephone. The area around Duekoue is an ethnic tinderbox where a civil war which erupted in 2002 has exacerbated long-running disputes between local villagers and farmers coming from neighbouring countries or other parts of Ivory Coast. A ceasefire agreement was signed in May 2003, but the world's top cocoa grower is still split between a government-run south and rebel-held north. --More 2319 Local Time 2019 GMT
