Thousands flee chaos and violence of Ivory Coast
France, other countries and the United Nations have launched what looks like becoming one of the largest evacuations of Africa’s post-independence era.
They are flying out the first of thousands of foreigners on requisitioned commercial airliners after days of violence targeting Ivory Coast’s former colonial ruler.
French soldiers in boats plucked some trapped citizens from the banks of Abidjan’s lagoons.
Long 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 yesterday for calm and for a mass uprising against the French.
French President Jacques Chirac sternly demanded that Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo’s government rein in his thousands of hard-line supporters, who brought Gbagbo to power in 2000 and now are leading the anti-French street violence.
The Ivory Coast’s government “is pushing to kill white people – not just the French, all white people”, Marie Noel Mion, rescued in a wooden boat at daybreak, said as and hundreds of others waited at Abidjan’s airport, some camped in tents on the floor of the airport terminal.
“The people here have lost everything – their houses, their companies, everything,” said one man, a Belgian businessman who said he was leaving after 23 years and not coming back.
“After 23 years in Ivory Coast, I have 130 pounds of luggage and a dog. I see a very dark picture for the future of Ivory Coast,” he said.
The mayhem, checked only intermittently by Gbagbo’s government, has been unanimously condemned publicly by Gbagbo’s fellow African leaders and drawn moves toward UN sanctions.
It threatens lasting harm to the economy and stability of Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and once West Africa’s most peaceful and prosperous nation.
As the evacuation got under way, France’s Cabinet approved a decree requisitioning commercial aircraft to carry out French citizens.
France expected to fly out between 4,000 to 8,000 citizens, a French official said – the majority of the 14,000 French citizens still left in Ivory Coast after 1999, when the country’s first-ever coup ended four decades of post-independence stability.
Eleven Portuguese citizens were among those evacuated to Spain, the Portuguese Foreign Ministry said. About 20 Americans landed last night in Accra, capital of neighbouring Ghana, on a Canadian-organised evacuation flight.
Evacuees also included some UN employees and others among 1,500 expatriates from UN offices around the city. More than 1,600 others – most of them French, but also citizens of 42 other countries – had taken refuge inside a French military camp.
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