The Ivory Coast government was preparing on Friday to strike at rebels holding the towns of Bouake and Korhogo as France continued to pull out foreigners after last week’s attempted coup.
As tensions mounted in the former French colony in west Africa, the United States also advised all its citizens to leave after French soldiers evacuated more than 1 200 foreigners from Bouake in the centre of the country near the capital Yamoussoukro.
Ivory Coast sent out an SOS on Thursday for a regional force to help it fight the army mutineers and what Defence Minister Moise Lida Kouassi termed ”external aggression”.
Rebel soldiers seized Bouake and the northern town of Korhogo in a failed coup attempt on September 19, which was quickly put down in the economic capital Abidjan at a cost of 270 dead and 300 wounded, according to an official count.
Speaking on state television, Kouassi called Bouake and Korhogo ”war zones” and warned that ”in a few hours the armed forces will be called upon to do their duty”.
Three Nigerian ground-attack jets were standing by at Abidjan to support the army of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
A ”limited number” of US special forces were also at hand, with more poised to intervene from neighbouring Ghana to protect US nationals if necessary, US officials said, and a small British contingent was checking whether British troops were needed to protect their nationals.
French army representative Colonel Christian Baptiste said a total of
1 200 foreigners, most of them members of the French community and other westerners in the central city of Bouake, had been escorted to the capital Yamoussoukro, 100 kilometres to the south.
The French army was still in Bouake on Friday helping to evacuate others wishing to leave.
There are an estimated 20 000 French nationals living in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer and a leading producer of coffee and palm oil.
The Ivory Coast government said the bid to topple Gbagbo was masterminded by a ”rogue state” in the region which the ruling party newspaper later identified as Burkina Faso.
In the two days following the uprising, the paramilitary gendarmerie burnt the shacks of thousands of immigrants living in Abidjan shantytowns, and Burkina Faso officials said they were concerned for the safety of their nationals, the largest immigrant group in Ivory Coast.
West African leaders decided to hold an emergency summit on the crisis in Abidjan on Sunday.
Adrienne Diop, a representative for the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), said Gbagbo had asked that it send in the Ecomog peacekeeping force, which has previously intervened in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea-Bissau.
Nigeria traditionally furnishes the Ecomog command and the bulk of its troops.
”The Ecowas members think democracy is being threatened in Cote d’Ivoire,” said Nigerian junior foreign minister Dubem Onyia, using the French form of the country’s name.
”Ecomog is on alert and will be deployed when President Gbagbo decides.”
The Ivorian government earlier said that former military ruler General Robert Guei, who was killed in the initial fighting in Abidjan, had been the leader of the rebellion.
In Bouake, however, rebel Warrant Officer Tuo Fozie told journalists that Guei had had nothing to do with the uprising.
Neither had opposition figure Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister who has taken refuge with the ambassador of France after charging that security forces tried to kill him, Fozie said.
”There is no political boss behind us, so far as I know. We are soldiers; this is not a political movement.”
Guei seized power in December 1999, and ruled for 10 months. He contested a violence-wracked presidential election in October 2000, but lost to Gbagbo, after which a number of soldiers loyal to the general fled the country.
The mutineers have demanded that all soldiers in exile be allowed to return and that those in prison be freed. – Sapa-AFP