TOUMODI, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - Protestors marched through cities in Ivory Coast on Monday, some burning tyres or throwing stones at soldiers and police, who dispersed them by firing tear gas and live rounds into the air, witnesses said.
Protests have erupted almost daily in the world's top cocoa grower since President Laurent Gbagbo dissolved the government and the electoral commission on February 12. The military killed at least five protesters at a rally on Friday.
At least 2,000 protesters bearing anti-Gbagbo banners and chanting "thief" marched through Toumodi, south of the capital, as police and soldiers kept close watch, their weapons cocked.
Public anger is mounting over years of delays to the election timetable but cocoa output has not been affected, according to exporters.
The polls are meant to draw a line under a 2002-2003 civil war that cut the country in two and brought economic growth to a near standstill.
"We've been lied to all along," shouted Amoin Tamini at the Toumoudi march. "We can't sit with our arms folded. We are on the streets to get elections and liberate Ivory Coast."
In Abidjan's northern suburb of Abobo, a Reuters witness saw police disperse marchers, at least one of whom was wielding a machete, which officers confiscated.
A group of protesters briefly captured a plainclothes policeman and seized his gun before police broke them up.
One protester, badly beaten by police, lay unconscious in the street.
A Reuters reporter saw several roadblocks set up by protesters on the main route between the capital Yamoussoukro and the main commercial city of Abidjan.
The cocoa hub of Daloa was largely quiet after a flare up of violence, when witnesses said protestors burnt tyres and hurled stones at security forces before being dispersed by tear gas.
NEW GOVERNMENT?
Protests had been largely peaceful until Friday, when security forces opened fire on demonstrators in the southwestern town of Gagnoa, killing five people and escalating an already tense situation across the country.
The opposition has called for mass action to continue until Gbagbo reinstates the electoral commission.
Gbagbo dissolved the commission after accusing its chief Robert Mambe of illegally adding names to the electoral register to boost the opposition vote.
Ivory Coast is now certain to miss a March deadline to hold presidential polls already four and a half years overdue.
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, a rebel during the civil war, has been in the process of forming a new government for more than a week, but it is unclear when he will announce it.
Gbagbo said in a statement in the state-owned press on Saturday that he had temporarily reinstated Defence Minister Michel N'Guessan Amani, Interior Minister Desire Tagro and Finance Minister Charles Diby to handle government business.
Pressure from the United Nations, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional body and Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore is mounting on Gbagbo to move swiftly to get the peace process back on track.
Compaore, the mediator in Ivory Coast's conflict, arrived in Abidjan on Monday for talks with the various factions about how to resolve the impasse, an official at the presidency said.
(Reporting by Ange Aboa in Toumodi and Media Coulibaly in Abidjan; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Jon Boyle)
