Mass evacuation from I Coast

2004-11-10 22:08

Abidjan France, other nations and the United Nations launched one of the largest evacuations of Africa's post-independence era on Wednesday, flying out the first of thousands of foreigners on requisitioned commercial airliners amid days of stunning violence targeting France, Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler.

French soldiers in boats plucked some trapped citizens from the banks of Abidjan's lagoons.

Long convoys sent out by the US embassy and other nations gathered foreigners from their homes, rounding them up for evacuation as Ivory Coast state TV alternately appealed for calm and for a mass uprising against the French.

French President Jacques Chirac sternly demanded that Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo's government rein in his thousands of hard-line supporters, whose looting, burning attacks often have failed to discriminate among foreigners.

Ivory Coast's "government is pushing to kill white people - not just the French, all white people," said Marie Noel Mion, rescued in a wooden boat at daybreak and waiting with hundreds of others at Abidjan's airport, some camped in tents on the floor of the airport terminal.

'Dark picture'

"The people here have lost everything - their houses, their companies, everything," said one man, a Belgian businessman who said he was leaving after 23 years and not coming back.

"After 23 years in Ivory Coast, I have 60kg of luggage and a dog."

"I see a very dark picture for the future of Ivory Coast," he said.

The mayhem, checked only intermittently by Gbagbo's government, has been unanimously condemned publicly by Gbagbo's fellow African leaders and drawn moves toward UN sanctions.

As the evacuation got under way, France's Cabinet approved a decree requisitioning commercial aircraft to carry out French citizens in what was shaping up as one of the largest evacuations since Africa's 1960s independence era.

France expected to fly out between 4 000 to 8 000 citizens, a French official said - potentially airlifting out the majority of the 14 000 French still left in Ivory Coast after 1999, when the country's first-ever coup ended four decades of post-independence stability.

Hate messages

As the first convoys left for Abidjan's French-secured airport, state television aired more of what the United Nations called hate messages.

They included images of bodies - one with its head blown off - of some of the seven people reported killed in a clash on Tuesday at a French evacuation post.

France says the protesters 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 on state television Wednesday. "Let us all mobilise."

Sixty-four people were killed and "more than 1 000" wounded, an adviser to the president said on Wednesday.

- AP