French Troops Evacuating Foreigners From Rebel Area in Ivory Coast

VOA News ^ | 9/26/02

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

French troops in Ivory Coast are organizing the evacuation of remaining foreigners from the central rebel-held city of Bouake. Rebel soldiers said Thursday they are willing to facilitate the departure of all westerners.

French troops on Wednesday rescued mostly American children and staff from a missionary school in Bouake. Some of them were flown out by U.S. troops Thursday to neighboring Ghana.

Meanwhile, more than 100 bodies have been found from fighting Monday and Tuesday between government troops and the rebels in Bouake. The dead were found at a military academy most of them are believed to be rebels. The stand-off continues in Bouake as government troops are poised to regain control of the country's second city once evacuations are completed. Hundreds of rebel soldiers who launched a mutiny last week in three parts of Ivory Coast also hold the northern town of Korhogo. Some of them said they were protesting plans to demobilize them.

Government troops quickly regained control of Abidjan, where at least 270 people were killed, including Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou and Ivory Coast's former military ruler, Robert Guei.

Nigeria has sent three fighter jets to help Ivory Coast end the rebellion. Nigeria also put its troops on standby following a request from the Economic Community of West African States.

[Guillermo]

As someone asked on an earlier post...Did the French get U.N. permission ?

[11th Earl of Mar]

I can imagine how that conversation went with the endangered foreigners...

"Well, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that there are soldiers here to rescue you. But the bad news is that they are French."

[ksen]

Thanks for posting this TC.

[SandfleaCSC]

In all fairness to soldiers everywhere, I think the guys down in the Couitre de Ivore are Foreign Legionaires. No froggies in that battalion.

[dfwgator]

All I can say is, "bon chance."

[gridlock]

La Marseillaise

Allons enfants de la patrie
Le jour de gloire est arriv?
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'?tendard sanglant est lev?
Entendez vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces f?roces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

Amour sacr? de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Libert?, Libert? cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure ? tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

Nous entrerons dans la carri?
Quand nos ain?s n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussi?
Et la trace de leurs vertus.
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!

[Merovingian]

VIVE La FRANCE!

[archy]

In all fairness to soldiers everywhere, I think the guys down in the Couitre de Ivore are Foreign Legionaires. No froggies in that battalion.

Not quite. Les Marsouins et bigors I believe, French Marines. And les berets rouge, the French Paras, probably the 1er RPIMa of the French Airborne Marines, *owned* by the 11th Para Division, and the descendents of the WWII French British-trained and led SAS.

And, of course, the officers in the Foreign Legion units are mostly French.

They all have the unique French military sense of humour about accomplishing their mission. This is not at all the Frenc *speedbump* armo of the German's Blitzkrieg campaign.

More on the French military forces order of battle and unit taskings *here. Lively little site!

-archy-/-

A French soldier notes the number of foreigners leaving by road from Bouake, Ivory Coast on Thursday Sept. 26, 2002. The French army has secured the road leaving Bouake in order to evacuate the foreigners trapped in the standoff between rebel soldiers and loyalist troops in the Ivory Coast.

(AP Photo/Christine Nesbitt)

French troops prepare to leave Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast to head to the Bouake area in the Ivory Coast, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2002. U.S. and French troops moved into Bouake Wednesday to safeguard Westerners caught in a six-day uprising after a failed coup Sept. 19 in which at least 270 people died.

(AP Photo/Christine Nesbitt)

Locals look on as a French soldier stands guard in Kouandia-Prikro on the way to Bouake, Ivory Coast Wednesday Sept. 25, 2002. French troops evacuated the children and American families who were trapped at the International Christian Academy in Bouake in a standoff between rebel soldiers and loyalist troops in the Ivory Coast.

(AP Photo/Christine Nesbitt)

A French soldier stands guard on top of a military vehicle at checkpoint at the entrance to the airport in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Bouake on Tuesday Sept. 24, 2002. French troops were deployed to protect and if necessary evacuate foreigners in the standoff between rebel soldiers and loyalist troops in the Ivory Coast. A French flag is seen in the background.

(AP Photo/Christine Nesbitt)

[archy]

La Marseillaise

Allons enfants de la patrie...

Le Boudin:

Tiens, voila' du boudin. voila' du boudin, voila' du boudin,
Pour les Alsaciens, les Suisse et les Lorrains,
Pour les Belges, y en a plus, pour les Belges, y en a plus ,
Ce sont des tireurs au cul.
Pour les Belges, y en a plus, pour les Belges, y en a plus ,
Ce sont des tireurs au cul.

Au Tonkin, la Légion immortelle
A Tuyen-Quang illustra notre drapeau,
Héros de Camerone et frères modèles
Dormez en paix dans vos tombeaux.

Au cours de nos campagnes lointanes
Affrontant la fièvre et le feu,
Oublions avec nos peines,
La mort qui nous oublie si peau,
Nous, la Legion.

[Shermy]

[archy]

A tank and a military vehicle wait to join a convoy of French soldiers to leave the airport in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast , to move to a position closer to Bouake on Tuesday Sept. 24, 2002. French troops are ready to protect and if necessary evacuate foreigners in the standoff between rebel soldiers and loyalist troops in the Ivory Coast. (AP Photo/Christine Nesbitt)

Nice wheelies. They've got a serious main gun, and they can really swim, even with an ammo load aboard. And the new French Jeeps are amphibious too....

[LibKill]

I suppose I will refrain from bashing the French for a couple of weeks or so.

[Phillip Augustus]

Vive la France!

[BnBlFlag]

Occasionally they get one right!

[dsutah]

So their Marines operate out of the Army, instead of the Navy like ours. I remember reading somewhere else that this is so. I think it was on a Camp Pendleton web page.

It seems that they had a French Marine commander come to the Calif. Marine base to watch them as they trained. He said their Marines did much of the same thing, but operated out of their Army, instead of the Navy.

[archy]

The French have their own peculiar way of doing things, and those French troops with the Anchors on their uniforms are well enough known as historical reminders in the former French settlements from around St Louis to the Indiana towns of Vincennes and Terre Haute, among others.

And just as our Narines have their own way of doing things and traditions seperate from those of the parent service Army, so too do their Marines. It's very much a chicken-and-the-egg question as to which came first or is the greater influence, but the effect is immediately clear to any serious observer of the Marines of both nations.

God bless 'em all.

-archy-/-

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

UPDATE 2

French, US airlift foreigners in north Ivory Coast
Ruben Sprich and Alistair Thomson
Reuters, 9/29/02

French and U.S. troops evacuated hundreds of foreigners on Sunday from the rebel-held north of Ivory Coast as West African leaders debated how to end the 11-day-old crisis.

"We have already evacuated about 300 people and there are about 20 to go," a French military spokesman said by satellite phone from the opposition stronghold of Korhogo.

French troops collected the European, American and African foreigners by helicopter and by road from northern towns. They were assembled in Korhogo and flown on a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane to Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast's official capital.

Rebels at Korhogo airport, surprised by the dawn arrival of the first helicopters, fired shots at them, the spokesman said.

"The helicopters fired back with 7.62 mm machineguns and they caused the mutineers to run away. It's a minor accident," Lieutenant Colonel Ange-Antoine Leccia said.

The rebels staged an unsuccessful coup on September 19 and control much of the north and centre of the world's biggest producer of cocoa. Hundreds have died in the fighting.

Advance rebel units are only 50 km (30 miles) north of Yamoussoukro, a thinly populated city of wide boulevards and the a grandiose Catholic basilica.

But the government says loyal forces are not losing more ground and will soon launch a major counter-attack.

REBELS IN SECOND CITY

Mystery surrounds the identity of the well-armed and organised rebels. They say they are ex-soldiers who want change and whose destination is Abidjan, the economic capital on the Atlantic coast where President Laurent Gbagbo is based.

"Once we get to Abidjan, we'll return politics to the politicians," Tuo Fozie, a rebel commander, told Reuters in Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city in the centre of the country.

The areas of Bouake visited by a Reuters team on Sunday were calm and under the control of a small rebel force.

In a sign of growing concern, South African President Thabo Mbeki flew to Ghana on Sunday to attend a West African summit on the crisis. Mbeki is current chairman of the African Union.

The possible dispatch of a military force to Ivory Coast, effectively to block the rebel advance, was top of the agenda.

The crisis is seen by some as a test of Africa's resolve to break with a past of bloody military coups.

"We are determined to put the history of coups behind us. No government which comes to power through a coup will be recognised," Mohammed ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States, told reporters.

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, the current ECOWAS chairman, said the summit would look at individual troop contributions the 16 member states could make.

"Troops will not go there to make war. It's a peace force ...to facilitate dialogue between Ivory Coast's authorities and its citizens," Wade said on Sunday.

OPPOSE ECOMOG INTERVENTION

But the rebels in Bouake opposed any intervention by ECOMOG, the ECOWAS military arm that was previously deployed in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"If ECOMOG comes here, there won't be peace for 20, 30, 40 years," Tuo Fozie said.

The government side also appears opposed to the idea of receiving foreign troops.

Defence Minister Moise Lida Kouassi said Ivory Coast was asking African friends, and former colonial power France, for transport, field communications, munitions and other supplies.

"We believe that our own soldiers can liberate our territory from this aggression," Lida Kouassi told Reuters on Saturday.

Gbagbo will seek to persuade the summit that Ivory Coast is the victim of foreign aggression, not a domestic quarrel.

Although the government has not named names, it has long accused northern neighbour Burkina Faso of harbouring dissidents. Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore was in Ghana's capital Accra for the summit.