At least 150 people have been chased from their homes in southeastern Ivory Coast after members of rival ethnic groups threatened to burn down their villages, residents said on Friday. Around 100 people were sheltering in the courtyard of a local government office in Alepe, some 50 km (30 miles) northeast of the main city Abidjan, after fleeing the villages. Scores more people near the hamlets were still waiting on the side of the road for transport to Alepe, witnesses said. "(Locals) came to burn down our villages the day before yesterday," said Felix Sibwante, 24, who is from the north of Ivory Coast and works on a cocoa plantation in the village of Dangira, about 20 km from Alepe. "They told us to leave and said they wanted their land back," he told Reuters. Ethnic clashes over land have been frequent in the west of the world's top cocoa grower, which has been split in two since a civil war erupted in 2002, but less common in the southeast. --More 2328 Local Time 2028 GMT
