Kindgo
Advanced Member
Member # 2
|
posted
U.S. Sends Troops to Protect American Schoolchildren in Insurrection-Riven Ivory Coast
web page
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast Sept. 24 — The United States dispatched troops to safeguard 100 American schoolchildren trapped in a cut-off, rebel-held Ivory Coast city, a U.S. official said Tuesday after heavy gunfire sounded overnight there and the West African nation's army claimed to have entered the city.
"At the request of the U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast, the U.S. European Command is moving forces to assure the safety of American citizens," Lt. Cmdr. Don Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman, said in Washington.
Sewell declined to give further details on any planned operation, including saying whether the evacuation was imminent. He said only that the forces were ready "for any and all contingencies."
Fewer than 200 troops were on their way to the West African nation, ready to help move the children to safety elsewhere in insurrection-torn Ivory Coast, two U.S. defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Cut off since rebels seized Bouake, Ivory Coast's second-largest city, amid a failed coup attempt Thursday, children at the International Christian Academy and the rest of the city of a half-million were frightened by about an hour of gunfire at nightfall Monday.
"It really was cross fire, not shooting at the children but a whole lot of ammo going, scaring the kids to death," said James Forlines, director of Free Will Baptist Foreign Missions, which has missionaries in the region.
Forlines, who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone Monday from Nashville, Tenn., where he was in hourly contact with the school in the central city of Bouake, said none of the children was hurt.
Loyalist forces claimed Tuesday that their troops had made their way into Bouake. "Our troops entered Bouake yesterday," Col. Philippe Mangou told state radio. The government did not claim to have retaken Bouake, however, and rebels denied the city of a half-million had been breached.
Ranging from 5-year-olds to 12-year-olds, the young Americans are among 200 foreigners holed up at the boarding school for children of missionaries in Bouake.
After being driven from the commercial capital Abidjan in 12 hours when the fighting began last week, the rebels withdrew to Bouake, and to the northern city of Korhogo.
A resident of Korhogo said by telephone that rebels were firing automatic weapons into the air and ordering people out of the town center and back into their homes. Rebels were patrolling the streets and no loyalist soldiers had been seen in the town, the resident added.
As fighting ebbed and waned in the center and north of the former French colony, there were signs the political atmosphere was deteriorating. Top opposition leader Alassane Dramane Ouattara on Tuesday accused government forces of having tried to kill him during the coup attempt last week that opened Ivory Coast's bloodiest-ever uprising.
Speaking by telephone from the French Embassy, where he fled during the uprising, Ouattara said an attempt had been made on his life Thursday by paramilitary police.
"It's clear they are using this situation to try to liquidate and eliminate people in my party," he said.
Ouattara's supporters, who are predominantly Muslim northerners, have clashed frequently with President Laurent Gbagbo's mostly southern Christian backers. In 2000, hundreds of people were killed in street fighting triggered by presidential elections, from which Ouattara was excluded.
No Westerners are yet known to have been hurt in the five days of fighting.
Far more exposed are immigrants from neighboring Muslim countries, who have already been attacked in the lagoon-side capital Abidjan, as the uprising revives deadly rivalries between the mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.
In Abidjan, after the coup, residents said paramilitary police set fire to their homes in a mostly Muslim shantytown.
Red Cross and other international organizations sought shelter for nearly 4,000 people displaced by the coup violence.
The rebels' choice to take refuge in mainly Muslim cities has underscored the country's regional, religious and ethnic fault lines that lie behind hundreds of deaths since the country's first coup in 1999.
The same rifts have split the nation's security forces. The core group of ex-soldiers behind the uprising are believed to have been dismissed because they were seen as loyal to the country's former junta leader, Gen. Robert Guei, killed by paramilitaries in the first hours of the uprising.
Authorities have said that Guei, who installed a military regime after the country's first coup in 1999, was behind the bloodletting but Guei's family and aides have denied his involvement, as have some rebels.
Gbagbo's government has accused other countries of supporting the uprising an accusation widely believed aimed at least in part at Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast's Muslim neighbor to the north.
Ivory Coast previously has accused Burkina Faso of providing haven and support to armed Ivorian dissidents. Burkina Faso said it was closing its border with Ivory Coast on Monday until further notice.
France has sent extra troops and helicopters to the Ivory Coast to reinforce its 600-person strong permanent presence in a country once seen as an oasis of stability in a region scarred by some of Africa's most brutal wars
--------------------
God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
| IP: Logged | 
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
