At least 28 people were killed when armed men attacked villages on the outskirts of Ivory Coast's western cocoa town of Duekoue.
"We have counted 28 dead. We're sending the injured to the hospital but we don't have an exact number of how many there are. It's awful," said a police officer in Duekoue, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Duekoue is at the heart of Ivory Coast's cocoa-rich west where ethnic tensions have been exacerbated since civil war broke out in the former French colony in September 2002.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the latest attack.