UNKNOWN ATTACKERS WIELDING machetes and guns killed more than 1,000 civilians in the neighborhood of an Ivory Coast town controlled by forces fighting to install the internationally recognized president, the Catholic charity Caritas has said.

The UN mission in Ivory Coast said it has a team investigating the alleged mass killings in western Duekoue. It said most of the nearly 1,000 peacekeepers based there were protecting about 15,000 refugees at a Catholic mission in the town at the time.

Spokesman Patrick Nicholson of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas said workers visited Duekoue on Wednesday and found hundreds of bodies of civilians killed by bullets from small-arms fire and hacked to death with machetes.

They estimated more than 1,000 civilians were killed, he said.

The International Federation of the Red Cross put the death toll at about 800, in separate and independent visits Thursday and Friday.

Nicholson, the Caritas spokesman, said the killings occurred over three days in a neighborhood controlled by fighters loyal to internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara, though it was not clear who the perpetrators were.

“The massacre took place in the ‘Carrefour’ quarter of town, controlled by pro-Ouattara forces, during clashes on Sunday 27 March to Tuesday 29 March,” Nicholson said. “Caritas does not know who was responsible for the killing, but says a proper investigation must take place to establish the truth.”

He said the victims included many refugees from fighting elsewhere in the country, where rival forces had been battling over a disputed November election.

Caritas’ investigation would indicate that people were killed at close quarters in a small neighborhood of a town of just 50,000 people as pro-Ouattara fighters began a two-pronged assault that brought them swiftly to Abidjan, the commercial capital and seat of power, within days.

The charges would be a strong blow to the embattled government of Ouattara, who is calling for entrenched incumbent Laurent Gbagbo to cede power after losing November’s poll.

Ouattara’s camp denied forces fighting for it were involved in any atrocities including in western Ivory Coast, but did not refer to the latest allegations. Efforts to reach Ouattara’s spokesman Saturday were unsuccessful.

Previously, the United Nations put the death toll at 492 from four months of fighting.

UN military spokesman Col. Chaib Rais said he had “no special report” of mass killings: “There was fighting two days before, on Sunday, and people were killed, but I cannot confirm those numbers.”

- AP