Staring with tears in their eyes, Ivory Coast's people emerged from their homes to survey the wreckage of five days of violent upheaval -- and stock up with food against any feared next round.
France and some other Western nations flew out hundreds of their nationals Thursday in a second day of evacuations as South Africa convened urgent talks in a crisis it warns could destabilize West Africa.
PHOTO: AFP
The commercial capital, Abidjan, experienced the first day of calm since anti-foreigner mobs took to the streets last Saturday after a sudden, deadly clash between Ivory Coast forces and its former colonial ruler, France.
Some shops reopened and traffic returned to streets strewn with charred vehicles and the remnants of roadblocks. Residents crowded supermarkets and waited in long lines to draw cash from ATMs.
A woman stood horrified amid the burned-out wreckage of a French bookstore with tears welling in her eyes. Employees at an Ivorian frozen-foods company found the doors kicked in and the freezers emptied.
"They took everything, even the carpet," a delivery man said, too afraid to give his name. "Our entire future is in question. A boss can't pay people who can't work any more."
Once one of West Africa's most prosperous and stable countries, Ivory Coast has been riven by instability since a 1999 military coup ignited ethnic and regional tensions between the predominantly Muslim north and mostly Christian and animist south.
France, with some 14,000 citizens here, sent helicopters on Wednesday to pluck foreigners from villages and bring them to Abidjan's international airport, still crowded on Thursday with frightened families waiting for flights out.
A 15-year resident cradling her baby in the departure hall said she had just minutes to decide whether to stay or go when French soldiers swooped into Jacqueville, about 40km west of Abidjan.
"I grabbed my baby and I grab-bed by photo album and I jumped in the helicopter," said the French woman, who gave her name only as Caroline.
The violence began when Ivory Coast warplanes killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an airstrike last Saturday on the north during three days of government bombardments that violated a 2003 ceasefire in a now two-year-old civil war.
Within hours, France had wiped out the nation's newly built-up air force, sparking an uprising by loyalist youths who took to the streets with machetes, iron bars and clubs.
The mayhem, driven by President Laurent Gbagbo's fiercely patriotic supporters and checked only intermittently by his government, has been condemned by fellow African leaders and drawn moves toward UN sanctions.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reiterated his call to all parties to end the violence and condemned "the use of hate media which is fueling the tensions, xenophobia and inciting violent acts," UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Thursday at UN headquarters in New York.
"He reminds all concerned that they may be held accountable for their acts, in conformity with international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law," Eckhard said.
South African President Thabo Mbeki opened talks Thursday in Pretoria with the country's political representatives, including opposition leader and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
‘NO WORKABLE SOLUTION’: An official said Pakistan engaged in the spirit of peace, but Kabul continued its ‘unabated support to terrorists opposed to Pakistan’ Pakistan yesterday said that negotiations for a lasting truce with Afghanistan had “failed to bring about a workable solution,” warning that it would take steps to protect its people. Pakistan and Afghanistan have been holding negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey, aimed at securing peace after the South Asian neighbors’ deadliest border clashes in years. The violence, which killed more than 70 people and wounded hundreds, erupted following explosions in Kabul on Oct. 9 that the Taliban authorities blamed on Pakistan. “Regrettably, the Afghan side gave no assurances, kept deviating from the core issue and resorted to blame game, deflection and ruses,” Pakistani Minister of
UNCERTAIN TOLLS: Images on social media showed small protests that escalated, with reports of police shooting live rounds as polling stations were targeted Tanzania yesterday was on lockdown with a communications blackout, a day after elections turned into violent chaos with unconfirmed reports of many dead. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to solidify her position and silence criticism within her party in the virtually uncontested polls, with the main challengers either jailed or disqualified. In the run-up, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, which has seen a string of high-profile abductions that ramped up in the final days. A heavy security presence on Wednesday failed to deter hundreds protesting in economic hub Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, some
RSS