/ 8 November 2004

‘More than 500’ wounded in Abidjan unrest

French armoured vehicles took up positions near the home of Côte d’Ivoire’s president on Monday, and thousands of his supporters marched on the site, fearing an attempt to oust him as French forces clamped down on violence in the former West African colony.

Fifty armoured vehicles moved in around the home of President Laurent Gbagbo in the commercial capital of Abidjan, presidential spokesperson Desire Tagro said.

”Their presence here is scaring people. They’re crying and they think that President Gbagbo is going to be overthrown,” Tagro said by telephone.

The French denied targeting Gbagbo’s home, saying the forces were only securing a temporary base at a hotel a few hundred metres away for foreign evacuations.

”They have not surrounded Gbagbo’s residence. I formally deny that,” French embassy spokesperson Francois Guenon said. ”It is not a question of ousting him, that is very clear.”

National radio and state television called on young and old alike to take up positions around Gbagbo’s home, and at Côte d’Ivoire’s nearby broadcast headquarters.

Hard-liners have called throughout the weekend for loyalists to form a ”human shield” around Gbagbo’s home as French forces deploy in Abidjan, quelling mob violence that erupted after France destroyed the country’s fledgling air force on Saturday.

The destruction came in retaliation for an Côte d’Ivoire air strike on Saturday that killed nine French peacekeepers and one American aid worker.

The punishing French response set off three days of violent rampages by angry government loyalists, with mobs of thousands confronting French peacekeepers, looting and burning, and roaming house to house with machetes in search of foreigners.

On Monday, Red Cross official Kim Gordon-Bates said the chaos has left ”over 500 wounded — much more than that”.

Asked how many had died, he said: ”God knows.”

Gordon-Bates had said on Saturday that most of the injuries were from bullets. On Monday, loyalist mobs were stopping Red Cross workers as they tried to set up an emergency clinic in the area near Gbagbo’s home.

”The situation is very tense. I’m in the middle of a riot,” he said.

Thousands responded to the state broadcast’s appeals to fill the streets around the president’s home, chanting angry anti-French statements.

”The whites don’t like the blacks, but we don’t care!” mobs yelled.

”Côte d’Ivoire is a sovereign state,” declared slogans on signs waved by the protesters.

French troops fired warning shots to hold back the crowd, which was trying to block the road near the president’s home, said a worker at the nearby Hotel Ivoire, reached by telephone and speaking on condition of anonymity.

The mobs swarmed one foreigner — who appeared to be an immigrant from a neighbouring country — caught up in their midst, kicking and beating him.

”Kill him,” young men shouted before he was dragged into the crowd.

Six men, their faces painted black, forced an Associated Press reporter from his taxi at gunpoint, commandeering the vehicle.

French armoured vehicles rolled through the city, the country’s largest, after taking control of the international airport and strategic points, including bridges, over the weekend.

On Monday, saddened residents assessed the damage to a skyscraper-lined city that was once West Africa’s most prosperous.

”Everything is burned,” said one woman, a teacher at a French school looted and torched in the riots. ”They have stolen everything they could.”

”They even tore out the toilet seat,” the teacher said, speaking on condition her name not be used. ”The only thing I’m waiting for is for the airport to open, so I can get out of here.”

The weekend’s chaos erupted after French forces destroyed what France said was the whole of Côte d’Ivoire’s recently built-up air force — two Russian-made Sukhoi warplanes and at least three helicopters — on the ground.

The crushing French military response came hours after Côte d’Ivoire’s surprise and deadly air strike on a French peacekeeping post, the third day of a renewed government offensive against rebels after a more than one-year ceasefire in the nation’s civil war.

France has about 4 000 peacekeepers in Côte d’Ivoire. The United Nations has about 6 000, manning a buffer zone between the rebel north and the government south.

On Monday, the bodies of the nine French troops were flown home, along with 34 wounded French soldiers.

In Paris, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie rejected accounts by some Côte d’Ivoire officials that Saturday’s bombing was a mistake, saying there was ”no reason” for Côte d’Ivoire’s warplanes to have ”missed their targets”.

The defence minister called a reopening of peace talks for Côte d’Ivoire ”indispensable”.

African Union leaders called an emergency session for late on Monday on Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producer and for decades the most thriving and peaceful nation in West Africa — and the pride of France’s former colonial empire.

A 1999 coup, amid increasing instability following the 1993 death of Côte d’Ivoire’s three-decade post-independence leader, ended the country’s reputation for stability. Gbagbo was installed amid an uprising by his supporters the next year, during an aborted vote count for the first post-coup presidential elections.

In South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki was consulting with West African leaders ahead of an emergency trip to Côte d’Ivoire, a foreign affairs spokesperson said.

The AU said on Sunday it will send Mbeki to press Côte d’Ivoire to find a political solution to end renewed fighting with rebels in the west and north.

AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare condemned the attacks by government forces on the various locations in the north of Côte d’Ivoire, including those that hit the French forces. — Sapa-AP

Associated Press writer Nafi Diouf in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report