[Shadow_Group] Fw: ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - French troops clashed with soldiers and angry mobs

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

FoxNews.com

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - French troops clashed with soldiers and angry mobs
Saturday after Ivory Coast (search) warplanes killed at least nine French
peacekeepers and an American civilian in an airstrike - mayhem that
threatened to draw foreign troops deeper into the West African country's
escalating civil war. 

France hit back, destroying what it said was the entire Ivory Coast air
force - two Russian-made Sukhoi jets used in the bombing and five
helicopter gunships. France scrambled three Mirage fighter jets to West
Africa and ordered about 300 troops to ready for deployment in Ivory
Coast.

Mob violence erupted in Ivory Coast's national commercial capital,
Abidjan (search), upon France's retaliation, sending thousands of angry
loyalists armed with machetes, axes and clubs out into the streets in
fiery rampages in search of French targets.

"French go home!" loyalist mobs shouted, as thousands set fire to at
least two French schools and tried to storm a French military base,
seeking out French civilians as French and Ivory Coast forces briefly
traded gunfire.

"Everybody get your Frenchman!" young men screamed to each other,
swinging machetes.

French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Ivory Coast President
Laurent Gbagbo (search) would be "held personally responsible by the
international community for (maintaining) the public order in Abidjan."

 
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