ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Protesters loyal to Muslim former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara fought police in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan on Tuesday in a second day of pre-election violence in which at least 14 people have died.
Police, backed in some places by troops, fired in the air and dispersed protesters and rival groups with tear gas after ethnic clashes in which vigilantes from opposing sides attacking one another with machetes, clubs and catapults.
One policeman and three Ouattara loyalists were killed on Tuesday morning in the teeming suburb of Abobo, a Ouattara stronghold, police sources said.
Abidjan was paralyzed on Monday when Ouattara supporters turned out to demand that he be allowed to run in next Sunday's parliamentary election after the supreme court excluded him on nationality grounds.
Newly elected Socialist President Laurent Gbagbo put the country under a curfew and a state of emergency on Monday night, ordering the armed forces to back up the security forces and saying that the elections would go ahead.
"Police, gendarmes and soldiers from all branches of the armed forces are ordered to use all means throughout the country to oppose troublemakers," he told the nation on state television.
Tuesday's protests were confined to populous districts, but shops and banks closed in the city center and staff returned home to the suburbs amid fears that the protests might spread.
Muslim leader Idriss Koudous told Reuters that neighborhood youngsters broke into an Abobo mosque and burned prayer mats. Police said that in a separate incident they had arrested 45 people in the same suburb after finding arms in a mosque.
Interior Minister Emile Bogo Doudou told French radio 22 people had been arrested on Monday. Aly Coulibaly, spokesman for Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans, appealed for calm in a telephone call with French radio from custody.
Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer, won independence from France in 1960 and built a reputation as a rare haven of stability in a turbulent continent.
Ouattara, who is in France, is at the centre of a political crisis which split the country along ethnic and religious lines.
His party, which draws its support from the Muslim north, called a march for Monday. The government banned all street protests, saying the party had not given written notification as required by law, but authorised a rally in the national stadium.
Over 20,000 Ouattara loyalists attended the rally but many staged street protests, bringing Abidjan to a standstill. Activists demanded the lifting of the court ruling that barred him from the October 22 presidential election won by Gbagbo.
Opponents of Ouattara, a former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, say he is a national of Burkina Faso. He rejects the charge as a political ploy.
Scores of people were killed in ethnic and religious violence when he sent his supporters into the streets after the October election to demand a new poll with him as a candidate.
Gbagbo supporters had just ousted military ruled Robert Guei with huge people's power protests when Guei tried to steal Gbagbo's victory by rigging the result.
Ouattara's party says it will not take part in Sunday's election. Activists in the north, where most voters boycotted the presidential poll, say they will prevent all voting there.
Some have spoken openly of secession.
The election for a new 225-seat assembly is the final major poll in the restoration of civilian rule after the country's first coup in December 1999.
With additional reporting by Marc Koffi, Anne Boher, Vincent t'Sas, Matthew Bigg and Alistair Thomson