FRANCE/IVORY COAST: France found herself embroiled in a neo-colonial nightmare at the weekend when the air force of the Ivory Coast bombed the French base at Bouaké, killing nine French soldiers and wounding 30. A US civilian was also killed.
These were the heaviest casualties suffered by the French military since the suicide bombing of the Drakkar base in Beirut in 1983.
President Jacques Chirac retaliated by ordering the French air force to destroy the two Sukhoi-25 fighter aircraft and five MI-24 ground attack helicopters that comprise the Ivorian air force.
The "young patriots" militia loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo then took to the streets to terrorise the 15,000-strong French community in Ivory Coast. Shops, apartments and all four French schools in Abidjan, the economic capital, were looted and burned. Ms Régine Padovani, the director of the Lycée Jean Mermoz, was rescued by helicopter from the roof of the building.
"We found ourselves facing the horde," Ms Padovani told AFP. White people were chased through the streets of Abidjan. Their cars were burned and many gathered on rooftops until French troops arrived to evacuate them to a military camp.
Col Henry Aussavy, the spokesman for the 4,000 French troops in "Operation Unicorn", said Ivorian forces opened fire on the French encampment at Abidjan airport, damaging a Transall plane. The barracks of the French gendarmerie were ransacked.
Paris dispatched more than 600 reinforcements to Ivory Coast yesterday.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin visited the military base at Poitiers where most of the French victims of the bombing of Bouaké were from. "We have been brutally and violently struck. Our sadness is immense," he said. Mr Raffarin added that France was present in Ivory Coast "to defend the rule of law and avoid a civil war".
The mostly Muslim north rebelled against President Gbagbo, who is Christian, in September 2002. France sent troops to protect her citizens, and last February, the UN Security Council voted to send 6,000 peacekeepers to assist the French in the former colony.
France sponsored the Marcoussis peace accords which gave the rebels three important government portfolios in January 2003. But neither side was satisfied with the agreement.
On November 4th, Mr Gbagbo launched an offensive to attempt to re-take parts of the north, bombing several cities.
Both the mostly Muslim north and Christian south accuse France of supporting the other side.
Mr Mamamdou Koulibaly, the president of the Ivorian national assembly, claimed the French killed about 30 Ivorians and wounded another 100 over the weekend.
The French doctors' group MSF treated 78 wounded Ivorian civilians at their hospital at Treichville, but did not know whether they were wounded by French or UN forces or in crossfire during the looting.
Mr Koulibaly accused France of wanting to "re-colonise" Ivory Coast and warned: "What happened (this weekend) marked a turning point. Vietnam was nothing compared to what we will do here."