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| French army troops man a roadblock between the city and the airport
of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004. France and the
United Nations launched evacuations Wednesday of
thousands of French and other expatriates trapped at U.N. offices and a
French military base amid days of anti-foreigner rampages in Ivory Coast's
largest city, French and U.N. officials said.
[AP] |
As state television aired fiery calls to mobilize
against the French, French troops combed Ivory Coast's largest city to rescue
foreigners for evacuation, sending boats to pluck some French off the banks of
Abidjan's lagoons.
"The government is pushing to kill white people — not just the French, all
white people," said Marie Noel Mion, rescued by French troops in a wooden boat
at daybreak Wednesday, and waiting with hundreds of others at Abidjan's airport
for the first flight out.
France alone expected to fly out between 4,000 to 8,000 of its citizens from
across Ivory Coast, a French official said — potentially the majority of the
14,000 French still in the former French colony.
"It is on a voluntary basis. We are not going to evacuate all our French
citizens because they are too many," the official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
"We are evaluating the number of those wanting to leave and we have between
4,000 to 8,000 French who have expressed a wish to leave, whether temporarily or
for good," the official said.
Violence erupted in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer and West
Africa's economic powerhouse, on Saturday after Ivory Coast warplanes killed
nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an airstrike on the
rebel-held north.
France wiped out the nation's newly built-up airforce on the tarmac in
retaliation, sparking a violent anti-French uprising of looting, burning and
attacks by loyalist youths. The turmoil has claimed at least 27 lives and
wounded more than 900.
President Laurent Gbagbo's government, blamed by the French for the
airstrike, has failed to rein in the thousands-strong crowds of loyalists.
Evacuations began Wednesday with state television airing what the United
Nations has described as hate messages.
State media showed the bodies, one with its head blown off, of some of seven
people reported killed in a clash at a French evacuation center on Tuesday.
France says the seven were killed when demonstrators opened fire on the
French and Ivory Coast security forces returned fire; demonstrators claim it was
French troops who opened fire.
"The French are assassinating our children," one man cried Wednesday on state
TV. "Let us all mobilize."
"All those who saw the pictures of our compatriots killed yesterday ...
please go back and continue the resistance,' another urged.
Aid workers, businesspeople and longtime residents of the former French
colony huddled at U.N. agencies on Wednesday, many of them rescued from their
homes by French troops amid looting and burning.
"The people here have lost everything, their houses, the companies,
everything," one of them, a Belgian businessman, told the AP.
"I see a very dark picture for the future of Ivory Coast," said the man, who
said he had been in the country for 23 years.
On Wednesday, hundreds of expatriates were camped at Abidjan's airport, some
in tents set up in the floor of the terminal.
U.N. convoys shuttled foreigners to the airports, passing through "very
virulent" crowds of loyalist youths and passing burned vehicles and roadblocks
of burned tires, U.N. spokesman Philippe Moreux said.
"It's a very hostile crowd," Moreux said. "They're chanting slogans and
insults, things like, 'All the whites out,' 'Everybody get his white.'"
Evacuees included some U.N. employees and others among 1,000 expatriates
holed up at U.N. headquarters.
More than 1,600 other foreigners who have taken refuge in a French military
base in Abidjan are to be flown out. They included 985 French and citizens of 42
other countries, the French said.
Heavily armed French forces with three armored vehicles manned a roadblock on
the way to Ivory Coast's international airport, taken by the French military on
Saturday.
The airport was reopening on Wednesday for what were expected to be days of
evacuation flights.
Three Boeings with space for 250 people each would run what shuttles to Paris
and to Dakar, Senegal, French officials said.
At least three other countries besides France, Spain, Belgium and Italy, were
sending military planes to be on standby in the region if needed to evacuate
their nationals.
As the evacuations began, South African President Thabo Mbeki invited
representatives of Ivory Coast's warring sides to peace talks there meant to end
the violence.
No date has been set, but the meeting is expected "soon," spokesman Bheki
Khumalo said.
Mbeki was sent to Ivory Coast on Tuesday by the 54-nation African Union.
Ivory Coast has been divided between rebel north and loyalist south since civil
war broke out in September 2002. France and the United Nations have more than
10,000 peacekeepers in the country, trying to maintain a 2003 cease-fire broken
Thursday by the government airstrikes on rebel territory.
