Hundreds of youths who back Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo gathered on Friday at Abidjan airport, where 300 French nationals were due to leave the country after days of anti-French riots.
A crew from France 2 television was attacked by dozens of youths who pelted them with stones. The French television crew managed to escape in a car which had its rear windscreen shattered.
Ivorian security forces did not intervene.
Top French firms in Ivory Coast have evacuated some 500 of their workers and their families from the west African country over the past two days, following days of anti-French riots sparked by the ratification of a peace pact, brokered by Paris, to end months of civil war.
Detractors of the peace deal have said it is a humiliation to Ivory Coast and that it promotes terrorism by giving rebels, who in September launched the unrest in the country, key positions in a unity government.
Since 7:30am several buses were seen transporting Ivorian youths to the airport, near which a French military garrison is located.
At 8:00am, some 300 overly excited youths had thronged the VIP lounge ahead of the expected arrival of the country’s prime minister designate Seydou Diarra, who will lead the national unity government.
Some 300 French nationals were inside the airport preparing to leave the war-torn west Afican country on a DC-10 owned by Air Lib. The peace and power-sharing accord, which Gbagbo’s supporters say he was forced to accept by former colonial ruler France, has fuelled national outrage and been rejected outright by the army and five leading political parties, including the ruling Ivorian Popular Front.
All wings of the military and the five political parties have clearly said they would not accept rebels in the defence and interior ministries as envisaged by the deal.
Gbagbo’s Interior Minister Paul Yao N’dre has declared the pact ”null and void.”
Gbagbo has yet to make an eagerly-awaited speech on the peace accord, which he accepted at a summit in the French capital in front of 10 African leaders, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and representatives from the European Union. – Sapa-AFP