France, UN evacuate foreigners
2004-11-10 15:56
Abidjan - France and the United Nations launched evacuation on Wednesday of thousands of French and other expatriates trapped at homes, United Nations offices and a French military base during days of rampage s targeting French citizens and troops in the West African nation.
As state television aired fiery calls to mobilise 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 on 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.
The official speaking on condition of anonymity said: "It is on a voluntary basis.
We are not going to evacuate all our French citizens because they are too many."
French peacekeepers killed
"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 air strike on the rebel-held north.
France wiped out the nation's newly built-up air force 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 on Wednesday with state television airing what the UN has described as hate messages.
French troops open fire>
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 centre on Tuesday.
France says the seven have been 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 on Wednesday on state TV. "Let us all mobilise."
"All those who saw the pictures of our compatriots killed yesterday ... please go back and continue the resistance,' another urged.
In Paris, President Jacques Chirac demanded Ggabgo's government act.
"The Ivorian authorities should assume their responsibilities regarding public order," the French leader said.
- AP