MONOKO-ZOHI, Ivory Coast, December 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Ivory Coast's villagers said that uniformed soldiers killed 120 persons in a western hamlet, dumping some dead in wells and leaving survivors to bury the rest. And French Foreign Minister called Monday, December 9, for "light to be shed" on mass graves in the war-torn African state.

In an interview in the daily Le Parisien, Dominique de Villepin said, "We condemn the atrocities. Concerning the mass graves discovered recently, we demand that light be shed on them."

De Villepin asserted that the nearly three-month-long crisis in Ivory Coast was "real and dangerous," but added that France would continue its efforts to restore peace and stability.

A community leader Saturday, December 7, said 120 bodies had been dumped in a shallow grave found by French soldiers at Monoko-Zohi near the western front, while a missionary agency said it had been told of another 86 buried near the central rebel-held city of Bouake.

Ouedraogo, leader of the Burkinabe immigrant community at Monoko-Zohi, told Agence-France-Presse (AFP) that the mass grave had contained mostly west African immigrants who had been killed by "men in uniform" when the Ivorian army temporarily captured the area from rebels on November 29.

Another witness in the half-deserted town said: "They were tied up and then shot with Kalashnikovs before their bodies were thrown into the pits."

For its part, Ivory Coast's army denied any wrongdoing, saying first that the killers were rebels and then that the dead were rebels killed in fighting with government troops, according to The Washington Times.

"Look, this is very simple," army spokesman Lt. Col. Jules Yao Yao said. "The victims were rebels who were killed in combat. They then gathered the bodies, and buried them. It's as simple as that."

However, villagers said most of the dead were people who worked on the region's lush cocoa and coffee fields. They said the killing started when six trucks with Ivory Coast military markings arrived on November 27 carrying uniformed Ivory Coast soldiers.

Accusing villagers of feeding rebels, soldiers went from house to house with a list of names, witnesses said. At the end, they slit some men's throats.

"We heard the shooting - we panicked, and we all ran," said Kamousse, a merchant who was showing a customer a radio when the soldiers arrived.

"But my brother stayed in the house. He said, 'Maybe it's just someone shooting into the air.' Afterward, they took him behind the house to the latrine and shot him," said Kamousse, who gave only one name.

The fighting has split the once-prosperous West African nation in three, with separate rebel groups holding the north and struggling now to hold the west against a government offensive. Monoko-Zohi is 70 miles northwest of the government-held city of Daloa.

Blood streaked the paths of Monoko-Zohi Sunday. Limbs stuck out of a mass grave 90 feet long and 30 feet wide.

Over two days, November 27 and 28, soldiers shot some victims where they found them and gathered others for execution, Ouedraogo told The Washington Times.

In government territory Sunday, pickup trucks full of Ivorian soldiers and white mercenaries, some in black masks to hide their faces, rushed west to the offensive.

Monoko-Zohi and other villages to the west that had been strongly sympathetic to the rebels had been looted, gutted and emptied of women and children. Families fled to the bush, camping out under cocoa plants, locals along the road said.

Young village men and rebels roamed with an arsenal including Uzis and AK-47 assault rifles.

At two villages, Pelezi and Dagnan, cannonball-size holes in homes and destroyed tin roofs marked two weeks of government helicopter gunship attacks.

Insurgents denied playing a role in the massacre, saying they had no fighters in Monoko-Zohi. Rebel fighters moved in only after villagers came to tell them of the killings and ask for help, commander Zacharia Kone said.

"At that point we didn't even know this area. It wasn't our territory," Mr. Kone said. Witnesses said the dead were workers from neighboring Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and Guinea.