Ivory Coast Residents Under Siege: 'The World Has Forgotten About Us'

Julie Esse, who is about to give birth, was among the millions of frightened residents of Abidjan hiding at home today as Ivory Coast's besieged President Laurent Gbagbo holed up in a bunker at the presidential palace, refusing to budge.

Despite the defection of his troops, and under attack from French and U.N. forces who stormed the palace, Gbagbo remained defiant, though he was expected to be finally ousted from power sometime today.

That may not help Esse, 35, whose home was hit by mortar fire this week. She said she was trying not to panic over the prospect of giving birth at her home with only her husband in attendance. Because she suffers from an extreme form of sickle cell anemia, doctors told her she needs a blood transfusion before giving birth, and she must have a cesarean section because she has the anemia.

"I can't get to the hospital because they are shooting at all cars, even ambulances," Esse, a hat designer and blogger, told AOL News by phone today. "I am so worried. I'm afraid my contractions are going to start. I tried to find a doctor, but they don't want to get in cars because they will get shot at. And there's no blood for my type at the blood bank. It is all gone. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Esse lives not far from the U.S. Embassy and asked if someone there could help her at least get a doctor. But the man who answered the phone at the embassy hung up on AOL News twice, saying Esse should have left the city.

Electricity, water and other services have been cut in her home in the Riviera Garden section of the city, so Esse could not watch televised reports indicating that Gbagbo was on the brink of surrendering after four months of refusing to cede power to his rival Alassane Ouattara, the U.N.-recognized president.

Gbagbo appears to have been finally brought to his knees by an assault by forces loyal to Ouattara and backed by U.N. and French helicopter airstrikes, but was stubbornly staying in his bunker, according to early reports this morning. Gbagbo has tenaciously clung to power despite being officially defeated in the November presidential election by Ouattara and despite international pressure on him to step down.

"The hour of Gbagbo's departure has arrived," a spokesman for Ouattara's military forces said on state television Tuesday -- although Gbagbo issued a statement earlier in the day swearing to resist all efforts to depose him even as troops moved in on the presidential palace. Ouattara has urged his supporters to take Gbagbo alive.

Thousands of people could be seen streaming out of Abidjan this week with their hands up in their air, so as not to be shot at.

Global attention has focused on Ivory Coast since Monday, when the U.N. and France began an intervention aimed at ending the bloody standoff between Gbagbo forces and Ouattara loyalists. The conflict has plunged the country into its worst crisis since the 2002-03 civil war.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor told Reuters on Tuesday that he is in talks with West African states about reported atrocities in Ivory Coast. The Catholic charity Caritas told The Associated Press on Saturday that unidentified attackers who could have come from either side killed up to 1,000 people in the town of Duekoue, many of whom were hacked to death with machetes.

But Esse is one of a number of Ivory Coast citizens who feel their plight has been largely ignored by an outside world that is more focused on the protection of civilians in Libya.

"Nobody cares about us," said Esse, who is at home with her husband and young children. "We couldn't sleep last night because of all the gunfire and helicopters. Today two of the walls in my house were destroyed."

Manasse Dehe, 25, a Web designer, said Abidjan has been under such siege since March 31 that few people dare to leave their homes.

"The world has forgotten about us while we have to hide inside our houses," Dehe said via Skype. "We can't go out to work or to get food because there's too much shooting. I can look out the window and see wounded people and three people from my neighborhood who have been shot to death."

Dehe said the situation reached a crisis point Saturday when he helped organize a Facebook page, Chaine Humanitaire, where people with emergencies ask for help.

"There are at least 10 pregnant women who need to get to the hospital, but there are no ambulances and no private cars to take them because of the shooting," Dehe said. "We need cars, and we also need medicine. The drugstores are out of almost all medicine. We have people who need dialysis treatment."

Corinne Dufka of Human Rights Watch said she was fielding calls all day from people in Abidjan who are out of food and water but don't dare leave their homes.

One journalist at the Novotel Hotel in Abidjan yelled on the phone that the hotel was under attack, while the hotel concierge told AOL News that all hotel guests were told they had to stay in their rooms. As it was, one of the hotel managers was taken away with three guests by military personnel, and the concierge didn't know where they were taken or which side had taken them.

"Human life is being lost," said Dufka. "Democracy is on the line. The U.N. and France have moved ahead, but journalists have made a decision to not really cover it. Now everything is so bad in Abidjan that people are drinking filthy lagoon water just to stay alive."

Dufka, who was once a war correspondent herself, said the death toll in Ivory Coast probably rivals that of Libya but hasn't drawn the same attention since the conflict is harder to understand and the killing more low-tech.

Libya is an oil producer, while Ivory Coast is best known for growing and exporting cocoa.

"A million people have been displaced, and we've seen a least 400 politically motivated killings," Dufka said. "But the fighting in Libya is concentrated on heavy artillery, while in Ivory Coast people are being killed with machetes and nail-studded clubs. Death squads are pulling people out of their houses. Ivory Coast just wasn't taken seriously."

Daniel Balint-Kurti, a West Africa specialist with London-based Global Witness, said that Ivory Coast may have suffered from a lack of interest from international journalists, at least until recently.

"There's been a real lack of attention from the media," Balint-Kurti said. "That means the likelihood of a lot more real atrocities being uncovered in the days ahead. News about more bad things is likely to come out."

Balint-Kurti said that the current strife in Ivory Coast represents an astonishing fall for what he called "the onetime poster boy for African success."

"Until the late 1990s, Ivory Coast was the most successful country in Africa," he said. "It was the opposite of all the other former European colonies. More French moved here after independence in 1960 than lived here before."

However, Mike McGovern, a Yale University anthropology professor and expert on Ivory Coast, said that U.N. and French forces moved in at the right time and that it's understandable that Ivory Coast has not been the focus of international interest.

"In terms of geo-strategy, Ivory Coast doesn't have that much oil, nor is it in a part of the world people know much about or care about," McGovern said.

"But I don't think the world has ignored Ivorians," he continued. "The recent U.N. and French intervention to protect civilians was the right thing to do, and I don't think they came too late. The big question is whether this intervention will help or hurt a sustainable peace. Many Gbagbo supporters will see this intervention as a way of forcing Ouattara on them."

Dehe is among those who resent the military intervention.

"I think they are trying to destabilize the country," he said. "We are dying, and we are being wounded. Tell the world we need a cease-fire and we need ambulances and we need medicine."