Ivory Coast: African leaders try to launch peace talks

Airliners are shuttling hundreds of trapped foreigners out of the Ivory Coast this morning, as South Africa convened urgent peace talks on a crisis that it said threatened to destabilise West Africa.

France and other nations launched the evacuations yesterday. Convoys sent out by the US Embassy and other nations gathered foreigners from their homes, rounding them up for evacuation as Ivory Coast state TV alternately appealed for calm and for a mass uprising against the French. French soldiers in boats plucked some trapped citizens from the banks of Abidjan’s lagoons.