A 5,000-strong stone-throwing mob invaded Ivory Coast's main airport Friday, storming planes on the tarmac and taunting, slapping and spitting at terrorized French families fleeing their onetime prize West African colony.
"Never come back!" shouted young men, spewing profanities and spitting after one woman and three children ran sobbing under a gauntlet of blows from a parking lot to the terminal.
French forces deployed on the runway and airport perimeter in cannon-mounted armored vehicles and in helicopters, at one point aiming their rifles at Ivory Coast forces.
The day marked the tensest yet in a week of often-violent anti-French protests.
France -- its decades-old influence in West Africa's economic hub crumbling fast over anger at a French-brokered peace deal -- reluctantly urged its citizens out. The US, Britain and others did so weeks ago.
The airport invasion follows days of mass protests by hard-core government loyalists angry over a peace agreement signed Jan. 24 in Paris that they say yields too much to Ivory Coast's rebels, who have seized more than half the country in a four-month-old civil war.
The accord puts rebels and the government into a power-sharing administration until 2005 elections. Loyalists have objected most strongly to unconfirmed rebel claims that the deal gives them control of Ivory Coast's military and paramilitary.
Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer and West Africa's economic hub. Decades of stability and prosperity made it the base for French and others doing business in the region.
War here already has killed thousands, uprooted more than 1 million, and paralyzed the country.
Hurled rocks injured at least two French soldiers, one seriously, French military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Philippe Perret said. Rioters terrorized passengers, stealing suitcases and handbags, Perret said.
"Go home and don't come back!" the protesters screamed at families as they grabbed their bags and rushed into the airport. "Idiots!" rioters yelled at the ducking, crouching French.
Friday's protest began with a march on the airport at the commercial capital of Abidjan. Protesters pledged to keep prime minister-designate Seydou Diarra, picked to help lead Ivory Coast under the French-brokered peace deal, "from touching Ivory Coast soil."
Diarra, instead, remained in Dakar, Senegal, where nine West African leaders met into the night with Ivory Coast's government and rebels in a desperate effort to salvage the agreement.
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