Twelve gunmen who tried to attack national television headquarters in the West African state of Ivory Coast died in a battle with security forces that cast a pall over plans to start disarming rebels after a 14-month civil war, the tv director revealed. Director Jean-Paul Dahily of state broadcaster RTI told a radio station that the assailants wore black clothes marked "ninja" -- the name of one of the many militias loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo formed after an uprising against his rule in September last year. Military sources told AFP that 12 people died Friday during the gunbattle, but did not say who they were. They also said that one gendarme was killed and several others wounded in a shoot-out at a checkpoint north of Abidjan, the country's main city and economic capital. Reporters who approached RTI's head offices in the posh Cocody district on Friday morning saw three corpses covered with white plastic sheeting at a crossroads before being told to leave by members of the heavily reinforced security detail. The streets were closed to traffic to allow the bodies to be removed. Dahily said that, before they reached Cocody, the attackers, aboard a four-wheel-drive vehicle and several mini-vans known as "gbakas", ran into a checkpoint manned by gendarmes in the working class district of Abobo. They passed themselves off as a unit of riot police by showing the gendarmes an official identity card, he said. Dahily said that Defence Minister Rene Amani, army chief of staff Mathias Doue, and Gbagbo's top military adviser, Bertin Kadet, visited the television offices after the attack. The fighting, one of the bloodiest incidents in recent months, occurred shortly after former rebels, now known as the New Forces, agreed to start handing in weapons and tear down road blocks on Saturday. Louis Dacoury-Tabley, the deputy leader of the New Forces, said Thursday that "a new political environment is being created" since Gbagbo had formally agreed for the first time to implement a French-brokered peace agreement reached near Paris in January. "President Gbagbo said he would apply the accords; he also said that he would hand over powers to the prime minister as directed under the accords," said Dacoury-Tabley, adding: "If he says that, then we say we will return to government." Military officials from both sides thrashed out details of the disarmament plan in the rebel stronghold of Bouake, central Ivory Coast, on Wednesday. In a statement, of which AFP has seen a copy, they agreed to store the bulk of their weapons over a 12-day period starting Saturday, and to continue their pull-back of heavy weaponry from along the 640-kilometer (400-mile) ceasefire line that runs from east to west through the heart of the country. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Soldiers on patrol near the national television headquarters in Abidjan. (AFP/File/Issouf Sanogo)