Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Ivorian mobs armed with machetes went house to house in Abidjan this week, seeking white people to kill, as the country exploded in anti-French violence. The fighting began when the Ivorian government, which is battling rebels, launched an airstrike that killed nine French peacekeepers, who were part of a 4,000-strong contingent that has been keeping the warring sides apart. The government said it was an accident, but the French military hit back hard, seizing control of its former colony’s largest city, Abidjan, and destroying its entire, six-craft air fleet. That action outraged government loyalists, who took to the streets, looting and shouting, “Kill the whites.” The French newspaper Le Monde speculated that the Ivorian government could be acting on U.S. orders. “A France bogged down in Ivory Coast might be more sympathetic to America’s difficulties in controlling Iraq,” the paper said in an editorial.
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