The defence team for Laurent Gbagbo, who is currently awaiting trial for war crimes in The Hague, on Friday asked that the ex-Ivorian leader be tried on his home continent instead.

Gbagbo's trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is due to open in November, with the former president accused of crimes against humanity after his refusal to concede defeat in 2010 elections sparked a bloody stand-off in which some 3,000 people died.

Heavy rains in Ivory Coast have killed at least 16 people so far in June in the economic capital Abidjan, including six this weekend, civil protection said Sunday.

The latest victims died in Attecoube and Adjame, two poor neighborhoods in the city, because of a landslide and a collapsing wall, civil protection chief General Fiacre Kili said.

Customs agents at Rafik Hariri International Airport thwarted on Sunday an attempt to smuggle narcotic pills, in the third such operation in the past 24 hours, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said the agents arrested an Egyptian arriving from Cairo at around 1:30 am after finding 2,050 red-colored pills inside two icons made of wood.

Ivory Coast's defense minister Tuesday ordered soldiers to return to their posts after they held up traffic in the main city Abidjan to claim outstanding bonuses promised under a 2007 peace deal.

Unconfirmed reports also spoke of soldiers firing in the air in Abengourou in the country's east.

A Lebanese expatriate in Abidjan succumbed to his wounds on Wednesday after sustaining gunshot wounds, the state-run National News Agency reported.

According to NNA, 40-year-old Mohammed Malek, who hails from the southern village of Beit Leif, was severely wounded after unknown assailants opened fire at him during a burglary.

Internal Security Forces succeeded on Wednesday in arresting the criminal behind the 2013 murder of a Lebanese national residing in the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan.

They announced the arrest of the prime suspect in the murder Samir Zeidan in March 2013.

Police fired tear gas to disperse a banned protest Saturday in the economic capital of the Ivory Coast by supporters of former president Laurent Gbagbo, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

Fifty young people shouting "Free Gbagbo" were pushed back while they tried to charge a barrier set up by police, who fired tear gas and caused the protesters to disperse before they reached Yopougan square, in a part of Abidjan that has long been a pro-Gbagbo stronghold.

A French tanker has been hijacked off Ivory Coast, port authority officials in the economic capital Abidjan confirmed Monday, after a report that the vessel had been seized by pirates.

"The boat was hijacked in international waters," Alexis Guie, in charge of communication at the port, told Agence France Presse. The International Maritime Bureau earlier said that a French tanker disappeared at the weekend off the west African country, apparently in an act of piracy.

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo's party headquarters was attacked Saturday by unidentified men armed with machetes and shotguns, who left two people slightly wounded, witnesses said.

An Agence France Presse photographer at the offices of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) saw a car in flames outside while the building's interior was trashed, with documents strewn over the floor.

A raid on an army base in Abidjan left at least six dead Monday, in the latest of a string of attacks targeting the military in the Ivory Coast economic capital.

President Alassane Ouattara has struggled to stabilize a country still awash with weapons and demobbed fighters, more than a year after the end of a deadly post-election crisis.