French Troops Fire Into Ivory Coast Crowd

[ertes]

French Troops Fire Into Ivory Coast Crowd

Tuesday November 9, 2004 9:31 PM

AP Photo SVZ103

By PARFAIT KOUASSI

Associated Press Writer

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) - French forces opened fire Tuesday as thousands of
angry government loyalists massed outside an evacuation post for foreigners,
reportedly killing seven people and wounding 200 in violence pitting France
against its former prize colony.

The bloodletting erupted at a onetime luxury hotel French forces have
commandeered as an evacuation center for 1,300 French and other foreigners
rescued from rampages across the commercial capital, Abidjan.

An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies of three demonstrators outside
a hospital, their bodies draped in Ivorian flags.

The chaos in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer and West Africa's
former economic powerhouse, broke out Saturday when Ivory Coast warplanes
killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an airstrike on
the rebel-held north.

France wiped out the nation's air force on the tarmac in retaliation, sparking
anti-French rampages by thousands in the fiercely nationalist south.

The French set up their evacuation center Monday a few hundred yards from the
home of President Laurent Gbagbo, and the site has become a flashpoint for
violence.

French forces opened fire Tuesday as thousands pressed around the center in
protest, witnesses said.

It was not clear what sparked the clash. The French military refused comment,
saying it was trying to determine what happened.

Abidjan's Cocody Hospital received seven dead and more than 200 wounded, said
Dr. Sie Podipte, the emergency room chief.

Four days of confrontations have killed at least 20 other people, wounded 700
and shut down cocoa exports from the world's largest producer.

On Tuesday, stunned protesters filled the hospital, and survivors lay out the
bodies of some of the dead. A woman lay on the ground, screaming.

[maja92]

tak, tylko pare dni wczesniej rebelianci z Ivory Coast zabili 9 Francuzow z UN
bedacych tam z PEACE KEEPING misja. Rebelianci zaczeli tez atakowac francuzkich
mieszkancow.

Wielka Brytania przygotowuje swoich zolnierzy, by wyladowali na wyspie, gdyz
czarnoskorzy mieszkancy Ivory Coast zaczynaja atakowac Brytyjczykow takze. Beda
ich ewakuowac z wyspy.

Nie zacytowales reportarzy z poczatkowych wydarzen na Ivory Coast.

Pozdrowienia,

[maja92]

Link do SkyNews na temat Ivory Coast:

www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13247848,00.html
Pozdrowienia,

[ertes]

PARIS, Nov 10 (AFP) - An adviser to Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo said
Wednesday that French troops have killed 50 people and wounded more than 600 in
clashes since the weekend.

"The massacre of civilians by French soldiers amounts to 50 dead of whom 10 were
killed yesterday alone," Alain Toussaint told Europe 1 radio.

"Abidjan is in a state of war thanks to the French army which has stepped up
killings of the civilian population, including a young woman who was decapitated
yesterday by French bullets," he said.

Toussaint said he based his figures on information from the Red Cross and other
organisations.

On Tuesday evening an Ivorian hospital doctor said seven people were killed when
French troops fired warning shots at a crowd.

A wave of anti-French demonstrations

has hit Ivory Coast since French planes destroyed the Ivorian airforce in
retaliation for the killing of nine peace-keepers at the weekend.

Rwanda: co slychac

[ertes]

Four French intellectuals and researchers this week called on the French
government to accept its responsibilities in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that
claimed the lives of over 800,000 million people. The appeal was made through
the French daily newspaper 'La Croix'.

"France has considerable responsibility in what happened in Rwanda and the
constant denial of that responsibility reflects on the whole French political
entity", wrote Jean-Hervé Bradol, president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF),
the former head of MSF, Rony Brauman, Andre Guichaoua, professor of sociology at
Sorbonne University, and Claudine Vidal, director of research at the CNRS
(French centre for scientific research).

The authors, among them specialists on Rwandan and humanitarian assistance,
recalled a report by a French parliamentary probe team of 1998 which was not
only critical, but also set out some proposals. "Five years later, they have
buried the criticisms and recommendations of the fact finding mission", they said.

"It is part of the French political culture of never accepting its errors unless
forced to do so by the judiciary or unless divulged through the unsealing of
public archives. All our ministers rigidly embrace to this pattern, this
attitude of infallibility until brought face to face with proof".

The intellectuals continue, saying those government officers "lock themselves
within this reasoning where they want to keep us in the name of patriotic
consensus , which in this case is particularly misplaced".

According to them, "the non pursuit of Rwandans notoriously known to have been
active killers during the genocide and now living in France incognito or under
their own names", could be because their arrests or their trials would
"inevitably raise public debates on the attitude of the French government before
and after the 1994 genocide".

"In order to get out of it, the best departure would be to take the course of
humility towards the Rwandan people who want to know the simple truth", they
say. The authors quote Hubert Védrine, former French foreign minister as saying
'everyone was aware of the large scale massacres

[ertes]

France Defends Force Against Ivory Coast

By PARFAIT KOUASSI
Associated Press Writer

November 12, 2004, 2:55 PM EST


ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast

[ertes]

More than 62 people have been murdered in Ivory Coast when French forces opened
fire into crowds of unarmed people.

For others, last week's violence would be the last. Michele, a French man and
another 10-year resident of Ivory Coast, said he was getting on Monday's flight
to Paris - and never coming back.

"They say to me, 'French, go home - you have nothing to do here,"' said Michele,
a legal notary. "I think what's going to happen will be like a Rwanda.