French troops fired in the air on Monday to disperse thousands of protesters gathered in the upmarket Cocody district of the main Côte d’Ivoire city of Abidjan, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.
A crowd shouting anti-French slogans tried unsuccessfully to break through a security cordon set up around the Hotel Ivoire, where about 50 French armoured vehicles have been stationed since late on Sunday, following a weekend of violence.
National radio, controlled by the government of President Laurent Gbagbo, has broadcast appeals for citizens to head to the Hotel Ivoire to protest against the French military presence in the former French West African colony.
National radio also reported that it had information that a high-ranking Ivorian was being taken on board a French tank to the national television station, where they would ”let it be known that they were taking power”.
Demonstrators said they were under the impression that the French military was deployed to engineer a coup d’état against Gbagbo, whose residence is less than a kilometre from the hotel.
Senior officials in Gbagbo’s ruling party have accused Paris of taking advantage of its peacekeeping role in Côte d’Ivoire to support rebels whose uprising in September 2002 plunged the country into war.
Flights cancelled
Flights to and from Abidjan have been cancelled until further notice, South African Airways (SAA) said on Monday.
The airline said violence in the country and around the airport has made it unsafe to fly there.
”SAA will advise its customers when normal services between Johannesburg-Accra-Abidjan and Abidjan-Accra-Johannesburg will resume,” airline spokesperson Onkgopotse JJ Tabane said in a statement.
Flights to Accra in Ghana will proceed as usual. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa
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