Eighteen bodies have washed up from the lagoon in the heart of Ivory Coast's commercial capital Abidjan, witnesses said Tuesday, after a week of violent clashes following a controversial election.
Nine bodies were fished out of the lagoon on October 25, after the first protests that routed former military ruler Robert Guei, said Michel Plucinski, who runs a boat repair shop on the lagoon.
Two of the corpses appeared to have been teenagers, one witness said.
Another nine bodies, which were already decomposing, were found in the lagoon early Thursday, the day when supporters of new President Laurent Gbagbo and politician Alassane Ouattara staged running street battles in clashes with a strong ethnic and religious coloring.
Firefighters came to take the bodies away, witnesses said.
Ouattara's party, the Rally of Republicans (RDR) estimates that 155 people died in the clashes Thursday, with about 50 other deaths in the earlier protests.
So far there has been no official estimate of the casualties from last week's clashes.
One mass grave with 57 corpses was discovered Friday in the working-class neighborhood of Yopougon -- ABIDJAN (AFP)
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