Several of the bodies show signs of mutilation, BBC News reports.
Police there say that 1,500 officers and soldiers will patrol “known danger spots” in the main city, Abidjan, and this includes areas around schools.
The UN children’s agency, UNICEF, has been critical of what it says is a culture of impunity in the Ivory Coast. The agency noted that there’s been a repeated failure to investigate crimes perpetrated against children and it calls upon the government to address “a general sense of scare in the population” regarding the attacks.
“UNICEF is deeply worried by the kidnapping of children and the mutilated bodies that have been found,” Adele Khudr, UNICEF’s Ivory Coast representative said in a statement, Mail Online reports.
The attacks are a “very worrying phenomenon,” one government minister said on Saturday, Relief Web reports.
Ivory Coast needs to fight this “new type of crime” Anne Desiree Ouloto, the Familes and Children Minister said.
Police say that 21 kids have been reported missing in less than two months, with only one child found alive. Most of the children, kidnapped in several areas of the country, “were found dead, mutilated, decapitated or without their genitals,” police chief Brindou M’Bia said at a press conference on Friday. Ouloto said that new measures, like securing playgrounds, will be implemented, Relief Web reports. Officials are also urging parents to supervise their kids more closely.
One suspected killer was caught after he allegedly attacked two boys with a machete when they went to fetch water from a well in Yopougon, which is a suburb of Abidjan. The attack occurred on Jan. 25, in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers when Drissa Coulibaly allegedly attacked Cedric, 14, and Souleymane, 10, with the machete, Mail Online reports.
Coulibaly allegedly went after Souleymane, and then Cedric, but fortunately a soldier from a nearby base saw the attack and chased him away.
“I thought he had come to collect water,” Cedric said, per Mail Online, “But he pulled out a machete. He tried to cut me up.”
As word got around, soldiers from the base fanned out and tracked Coulibaly down. In police custody, he reportedly confessed to at least three murders. He wore a red and white robe that was filthy because he has been living on the streets for months.
In a matter-of-fact voice he told police that God had instructed him “to cut off children’s heads … and then I would be made king.”
“God told me to do this. God told me to cut off children’s heads and bring them to him and then I would be made king,” Coulibaly, 38, said, per Mirror Online. “I told him that I didn’t want to do this but he insisted.”
He then said his goal was to win his “Swords” of royalty, and he said he communicated with God by way of “angels” that were shaped like crows.
“Either he is very intelligent, (and pretending to be mad), or he is very crazy,” one official said.
Cedric’s mother, Daniele Kone, was present when troops questioned the attacker.
“He’s a very confident man,” she said. “Not a madman. He is used to doing this.”
She added that the suspect “said he had already killed three children” for Internet clients who are known as “browsers,” but Coulibaly has denied this. Browsers is a term used for criminals who specialize in Internet scams, and they are widely regarded as behind the child murders, although, there is as yet, not much proof.
“Fortunately, his machete was not well sharpened,” Corporal Habib Tito said when the search was done. “He was determined to get the two children.”
“Had it not been for the presence of one of our men, the smallest boy would be dead.”
The ongoing tragedy prompted First Lady Dominique Ouattara to speak out against “horrible and inhuman acts that nothing can justify. It isn’t right that parents should grow anxious each time their children go out of the front door of their houses.”
Police say the murder toll is extremely high and that it is “a real and unusual phenomenon” that has shocked Ivorians and spread fears that youngsters have become victims of ritual sacrifices, Mail Online reports.
“We know the typology of ritual crimes very well,” said Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko. “People are led to believe that through these crimes, they can gain power or money.”
Understandably, the spate of child murders has caused some rather hysterical responses that run the gamut from warnings posted on Facebook to alarmist text messages. Kidnappings are reported almost daily.
“Thieves of children grab them by force even from grown-ups or kidnap them around schools, or even go into homes pretending to be visitors or census agents,” according to an email sent to an AFP journalist.
This impoverished nation in West Africa has suffered much political and military turmoil and is set to hold a presidential election in October, and in election years, wild rumors about people disappearing for human sacrifice, particularly albinos, always circulate when politicians seek gains at the polls, Mirror Online reports.
“These are mystical and occult practices,” Didier Kobenan, an electrician in Abidjan said, per Reuters. “This is about black magic and they need these human sacrifices to get money and power.”
Several people said that the kidnappings were probably linked to ritual killings by corrupt businessmen and politicians, who use body parts in ceremonies that they believe will confer supernatural powers.
There were also similar ritual killings in the Ivory Coast prior to elections in 2006 and 2010. The next presidential election is due to take place later this year, but Ivorian authorities do not think there is a link with the latest killings.
“There is still no proof that any of these crimes are linked,” Bakayoko said.
“I am really afraid because this could happen to us too,” said one worried father in Abidjan to BBC News. “I have taken measures, I have talked to the maids and to those working in my house. I told them not to let my son alone.”
“We have been more vigilant,” said Graca Simon, who manages a school in the city. “We have taken the names of all accompanying children. And security has been reinforced at the entrance.”
Hopefully, the increased police presence will make things safer for children, but sadly, as long as people continue to believe these ridiculous superstitions, the killings will almost certainly continue.
