IVORY COAST: Hundreds of French citizens fled their former colony Ivory Coast yesterday after days of anti-French riots and looting in a country once seen as a model for Africa of post-independence prosperity.
Three planes carrying 843 French nationals were expected late last night in Paris from Abidjan, the main city in the world's top cocoa grower, French officials said. "I don't have a job any more, or a house. They took the bath, the furniture and electrical wires, everything," said Mr Bruno Regis, at the airport with his wife and three children.
"The way it ended here, I wouldn't come back here even if they offered me a new job," said the teacher from Marseilles.
More than 2,200 French and other foreign nationals have been sheltering in French and UN bases in Abidjan, chased from their homes by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo.
Some 150 American, Australian, Canadian, Spanish and Portuguese nationals also left from Abidjan's sleek, modern airport. French military sources said about 1,200 foreign nationals wanted to leave the country.
Britain has drawn up plans for troops to help evacuate the several hundred nationals it has in the Ivory Coast if the situation gets any worse, Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said yesterday.
Four vehicles sporting Britain's Union Jack flags, and carrying about a dozen soldiers, drove through Abidjan to a French-controlled lagoon-side hotel which may be used as a gathering point for any future evacuations.
Crowd violence, in which at least 30 demonstrators have been killed in Abidjan, exploded on Saturday when the French army destroyed most of the West African nation's small fleet of military aircraft after an Ivorian jet had bombed a French base.
The airstrike, which killed nine French peacekeepers and a US aid worker, came during an offensive launched by President Gbagbo's forces to dislodge rebels who seized the north of the country in 2002 after failing to topple him.