Ivory Coast: Hardliners urge more anti-French violence

Hard-liners urged loyalist mobs on to more violence today, after a day of mayhem in which French and Ivory Coast forces battled in the air and on the ground and machete-waving throngs hunted down French citizens in the largest city.

France and the United Nations demanded President Laurent Gbagbo restore order.

France was in control of the international airport in the commercial capital, Abidjan, after destroying what it said was the entire Ivory Coast airforce – two Sukhoi warplanes and five helicopter gunships.

Destruction came in retaliation for Ivory Coast airforce’s surprise bombing of a French peacekeeping position in the north that killed nine French troops and one American civilian, believed to be a missionary.

Leaders of Ivory Coast’s loyalist militias urged the public to take to the streets today, directing crowds to march to the Abidjan airport, lay siege to the French army base, and form a “human shield” around the presidential mansion of the country’s defiant leader, Gbagbo.

“We ask you all to take to the streets,” Ble Goude, a so-called youth leader in control of thousands of loyalist militia members, declared on state TV.

“Show France we are a sovereign state,” another loyalist hard-liner, Genevieve Bro Grebe, head of a women’s militia, declared.

Mobs tens of thousands strong rampaged yesterday with machetes, axes and chunks of wood, laying siege to the French military base in Abidjan and drawing warning shots and tear gas from French troops there.

Enraged at the French retaliation for the airstrike, mobs went door-to-door looking for foreign families, and looted and burned French businesses and at least two French schools.

“We are all terrified, and try to reassure each other,” one French resident who would not be named said.

“We have been told by the embassy to stay at home … It is a difficult situation to live through,” the Frenchman said.

Gunshots sounded through the night in parts of the city.

French helicopters fired warning shots overnight at the massed crowds, including at the city’s main bridges, witnesses said.

A loyalist leader, Eugene Djue, claimed at least six dead among loyalist demonstrators, and claimed two girls had disappeared after jumping off a bridge to escape the French helicopters.

There was no immediate word on casualties among foreigners and other targets of the mobs.

France took control of Abidjan’s airport by late last night, saying it was securing it for any evacuations.

French and Ivory Coast troops had traded gunfire on the tarmac of the airport earlier, as Ivory Coast forces tried to destroy French aircraft in retaliation. One French soldier was wounded and a French aircraft damaged in that exchange, French officials said.

Ivory Coast’s new fall into violence started on Thursday, when Gbagbo’s military reopened attacks on towns in the rebel-held north after a more than year-old cease-fire.

Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and a former economic powerhouse for the region, has been divided into rebel north and loyalist south since a September 2002 coup attempt launched the country into civil war.

A 2003 peace accord brokered by France, Ivory Coast’s former colonial ruler, ended major fighting, but a power-sharing deal failed to take hold, with Gbagbo’s government demanding that rebels disarm first.

France maintains about 4,000 troops and the United Nations about 6,000, manning a buffer zone separating rebel north and loyalist south. While France is widely seen as having protected Gbagbo’s government from rebel offensives, fervent loyalists are resentful of their former colonial ruler, accusing it of siding with rebels.

Saturday’s violence began when government warplanes struck French positions at Brobo, near the northern town of Bouake, UN military spokesman Philippe Moreux said.

Eight French soldiers were killed and 30 others wounded, French Defence Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said in Paris. An American citizen also was killed in the raid, the French presidency said without elaborating.

A ninth French soldier died of his wounds, de La Sabliere said in New York.

Council diplomats said the American who was killed was believed to have worked for a non-governmental organisation and to have been at the French base.

US Embassy spokeswoman Ergibe Boyd in Abidjan said diplomats have not confirmed the death. She said the American likely was a missionary since there is no US military or diplomatic presence in the area.

In response to the strike, French infantry destroyed the Sukhoi fighter jets at the airport in Yamoussoukro, 75 miles to the south, French military spokesman Col. Henry Aussavy said.

The jets were believed to be the ones that carried out Saturday’s strike and two earlier days of bombings of rebel-held towns.

More explosions rocked the capital after dark, apparently as French helicopters swept in to destroy the five helicopters. The French forces “realised the objective assigned to it of neutralising the Ivorian aircrafts,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

France sent three Mirage fighter jets from nearby Gabon, and French President Jacques Chirac said he ordered the deployment of two more military companies to Ivory Coast.

The UN Security Council, convening in emergency session late last night, demanded an immediate halt to all military action in Ivory Coast and emphasised that UN and French forces there are authorised to use “all necessary means” to keep the peace.

Later a French military helicopter swept in to pluck trapped civilians from a hotel in Abidjan as mobs burned and looted buildings across Ivory Coast’s largest city.

A French military helicopter landed early this afternoon at Hotel Ivoire, one of the country’s leading hotels. Witnesses watched as about 12 people with suitcases ran to the helicopter for airlifting out.

Gunshots rang out across the city, with smoke billowing from fires set by rampaging mobs.

There was no word of any formal evacuation of foreigners targeted - particularly the French – in anti-outsider sentiment in the loyalist south after clashes between forces of France and its former colony.

French forces took the Abidjan airport yesterday, saying they were securing it for any evacuations.