French fire on crowds
2004-11-09 22:32
Abidjan, Ivory Coast - French forces opened fire on Tuesday as thousands of angry loyalists massed outside an evacuation post for foreigners, witnesses said, and a hospital reported seven people killed and 200 wounded in a fourth day of chaotic violence pitting France against its former prize colony.
The bloodletting, overshadowing the launch of an African peace mission here, erupted at a one-time luxury hotel that French forces have commandeered as an rallying post for 1 300 French and other foreigners rescued from anti-French rampages across the largest city, Abidjan.
An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies of three demonstrators outside a hospital, their bodies draped in Ivorian flags.
The chaos in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer and West Africa's former economic powerhouse, broke out on Saturday when 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 air force on the tarmac in retaliation, sparking massive anti-French rampages by mobs of thousands in the fiercely nationalist south.
The French set up their evacuation centre on
Monday only a few hundred metres from the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, and the site has become a rallying point and flashpoint for continuing violence.
On Tuesday afternoon, French forces opened fire as thousands pressed around the barb wire-ringed centre in a day and night of angry protests, witnesses said.
It was not clear what sparked the clash. The French military here refused immediate comment, saying it was trying to determine what happened.
South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, sent by the 54-nation African Union to find a political solution to the crisis, said before Tuesday's shooting that Gbagbo had recommitted to carrying out tension-easing measures agreed to in past accords in the country's two-year-old civil war.
Mbeki said he would report back to the African Union for consultations on its next steps in the crisis.
Top Ivory Coast and French generals on Monday jointly called for protesters to go home, despite a day of urgent appeals on state radio and television asking loyalists to mass at Gbagbo's home and a nearby broadcast centre.
At the United Nations, security council diplomats weighed a French-backed draft resolution for an arms embargo on Ivory Coast and a travel ban and asset freeze against those blocking peace, violating human rights and preventing the disarmament of combatants.
- AP