YAMOUSSOUKRO (Reuters) – Alassane Ouattara was to be inaugurated as president of Ivory Coast on Saturday, in a ceremony most Ivorians hope will put a decade of conflict and instability behind them and mend a once prosperous economy.

The ceremony is to be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose troops helped end an impasse after a disputed election, and several heads of state and dignitaries in the former French colony’s largely ceremonial capital Yamoussoukro.

DUEKOUE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) – Thousands of cocoa farmers who fled their fields during five months of conflict in Ivory Coast are too afraid of ethnic reprisals to go home, and many fear their plantations are either looted or rotting.

Villages around Duekoue, a town encircled by rolling hills and tropical forest in western Ivory Coast, normally produce around 250,000 tonnes of cocoa a year — more than a fifth of total output from the world’s top grower.

DUEKOUE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) – The thousands of refugees packed into this churchyard in western Ivory Coast came here to escape death — but it is catching up with them as dozens now succumb to diseases such as cholera.

Chased from their homes by gunmen during the power struggle between Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, 27,000 refugees are still sheltering in a Catholic mission.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Militiamen loyal to former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo killed 120 people during a “scorched earth” retreat from Abidjan last week, the Defense Ministry said.

The United Nations said it was investigating the report.

The once-prosperous West African nation is counting the cost of a violent five-month power struggle between Gbagbo and President Alassane Ouattara that killed at least 3,000 people and uprooted over a million.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – In a muddy slum at the edge of Ivory Coast’s main city, palm leaves stuck in reddish mounds of earth mark the mass graves of locals killed by rampaging gunmen.

Buried there are 68 bodies of President Alassane Ouattara’s Dioula tribespeople, killed by militiamen loyal to his rival, Laurent Gbagbo, just hours after his overthrow on April 11, residents of the Yopougon district of Abidjan say.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s Alassane Ouattara took his presidential oath on Friday, cementing his rule over the West African state in a tense ceremony conducted by an ally of ousted leader Laurent Gbagbo.

A dispute over who won a November 2010 election triggered all-out conflict between pro-Ouattara and pro-Gbagbo forces that killed thousands of people and displaced more than a million, and only eased last month with Gbagbo’s arrest.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council ratified on Thursday the results of a presidential election showing that Alassane Ouattara won, reversing an earlier decision to reject them.

The court’s initial rejection of electoral commission results from the November 2010 poll sparked a more than 4-month power struggle between Ouattara and incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo that killed thousands and displaced more than a million.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – The first time Laurent Gbagbo’s gunmen stormed our Abidjan hotel in a hail of bullets, I didn’t quite believe it was happening.

I’d spent hours nervously convincing myself that a big international hotel with 10 floors, hundreds of rooms, steel fencing and a locked gate was an unlikely target.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – The first time Laurent Gbagbo’s gunmen stormed our Abidjan hotel in a hail of bullets, I didn’t quite believe it was happening.

I’d spent hours nervously convincing myself that a big international hotel with 10 floors, hundreds of rooms, steel fencing and a locked gate was an unlikely target.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara sought to assert his grip on power after weeks of fighting, leaving his rival Laurent Gbagbo isolated behind a military cordon in his bunker.

Ouattara, who is backed by the United Nations, said his forces had blockaded Gbagbo in the presidential residence in Abidjan — an ironic twist after Ouattara suffered months in a hotel under siege by Gbagbo’s troops following last November’s disputed presidential election.