PARIS (Reuters) - France has ordered more troops to Ivory Coast to protect French citizens after nine French soldiers and a U.S. aid worker were killed in a government bombing raid and Ivory Coast troops fired on French forces.
French President Jacques Chirac ordered the Ivory Coast planes involved in the Saturday airstrike destroyed and a defense source said French forces would also destroy five Ivorian military helicopters, leaving the country with only one helicopter.
Mobs of machete-wielding pro-government supporters rampaged through Abidjan, furious at the French destruction of the planes. Plumes of smoke rose from the plush Cocody suburb.
The French embassy said a French school in Cocody had been set ablaze, four French policemen were evacuated from a building by helicopter before it too was burned down and that there was a loud explosion near the embassy.
The escalating tension between the East African country and its former colonial ruler followed three days of a government air offensive to retake the rebel-held north of the country.
Full Story @ Reuters.com
Posted by Muddy at November 6, 2004 05:09 PM | TrackBack