Ivory Coast's newly appointed ambassador to the UN has warned the country is "on the brink of genocide".

In a TV interview, Youssoufou Bamba said there had been large scale violation of human rights as a result of the ongoing political unrest.

Laurent Gbagbo is refusing to step down despite his rival, Alassane Ouattara, being internationally accepted as the presidential election winner.

The UN has accused state media of inciting hatred against it.

Mr Gbagbo has said Mr Ouattara's victory in November was illegitimate. Both men have been sworn in as president.

Mr Bamba, who was appointed by Mr Ouattara, was formally welcomed at the UN's New York headquarters on Wednesday, solidifying UN support for Mr Ouattara.

At a press conference, Mr Bamba said Mr Ouattara had been elected in a "free, fair, transparent, democratic election".

"To me the debate is over, now you are talking about how and when Mr Gbagbo will leave office," he said.

The UN's acceptance of Mr Bamba as ambassador solidifies its support for Mr Ouattara

Mr Bamba said Mr Ouattara's main concern now was the "massive violation of human rights" in the past few weeks.

He said 172 people had been killed "only because they want to demonstrate, they want to speak out, they want to defend the will of the people".

"We think it's unacceptable. Thus, one of the messages I try to get across during the conversations I have conducted so far, is [that] we are on the brink of genocide."

Mr Bamba said some houses had been marked according to the residents' tribal background, and that he was concerned about what could happen next.

"Something should be done," he said.

Two suspected U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal region Tuesday killed 10 alleged militants, intelligence officials said.

Based on a CNN count, Tuesday's strikes raises the number of such attacks to 110 this year, compared with 52 in all of 2009.

The first strike occurred in North Waziristan, one of seven districts in Pakistan's volatile tribal region bordering Afghanistan, where unmanned aircraft missiles targeting militants have spiked in recent weeks.

The drones fired two missiles on a militant hideout in the area of Ghulam Khan, two Pakistani intelligence officials told CNN. Later, a suspected drone circled around the blast site and fired two more missiles. Six suspected militants were killed.

The second attack was on an alleged militant vehicle in the same area, killing four more alleged militants.

The Pakistani intelligence officials asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The first strike Tuesday occurred less than 40 kilometers (24 miles) from two suspected drone strikes on Monday, which killed at least 18 people.

On December 17, three separate drone strikes killed at least 57 people, a record for one day. All the deaths were in the Tirah Valley area of the Khyber Agency, north of North Waziristan.

Intense drone activity in Pakistan's tribal region has moved northward, mirroring the movement of suspected militants as they try to flee the targeted strikes, a senior Pakistani military official told CNN last week.

The United States does not officially confirm that it has unmanned aircraft firing missiles at terror targets in Pakistan, but it is the only country in the region known to have the capability to do so.

In 2010, we saw social networking skyrocket in popularity. We embraced a new category of tablet computer. And we rushed to new gaming systems that let us play video games without a controller.

But in the technology world, not all valleys are made of silicon. Whilethe highs were high for the tech winners this year, the low points were equally low.

Even tech titans such as Apple and Google had some rough moments in 2010. And some ambitious ideas that must have made sense behind closed doors just didn't translate well to the real world.