Foreign evacuations top 5 000

2004-11-15 14:59

Abidjan - The number of foreigners evacuated after a violent uprising in Ivory Coast has topped 5 000, the French military said Monday, while about 10 000 Africans without hope of flights out have fled across the border.

A French-led exodus from Ivory Coast started on Thursday, the first day of calm after five days of burning, looting attacks unleashed by supporters of hard-line President Laurent Gbagbo against French troops and civilians and other foreigners.

The number makes it the largest evacuation in Africa in at least a decade.

In 1997, a French led evacuation brought 5 000 foreigners from the Republic of Congo amid election violence and civil war there.

Aussavy said several hundred others have registered with the French military for evacuation.

A French official last week said up to 8 000 French nationalists alone wanted to leave Ivory Coast.

That would represent the majority of French citizens left in Ivory Coast after five years of unrest following a 1999 coup in the world's top cocoa producer.

Liberia

Separately, the UN refugee agency in Geneva said about 10 000 refugees of African nationalities - many of them likely immigrants from Ivory Coast's poorer, northern neighbours - have fled into neighbouring Liberia.

The latest crisis in Ivory Coast erupted November 6, when Gbagbo's airforce bombed a French military post three days into a renewed government offensive in Ivory Coast's 2-year-old civil war.

The strike killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker.

France wiped out Gbagbo's newly built up air force on the tarmac in retaliation.

The Gbagbo-allied Young Patriot youth militia led violent protests, burning French businesses and schools.

Attackers raped several expatriates, France says.

While no deaths have been reported among Westerners since the air strike, Ivory Coast says 62 loyalists were killed when French forces allegedly repeatedly opened fire on crowds.

- AP