Ther situation in Ivory Coast seems dangerous. I hope that koto Sidi Sanneh is
fine together with his family and other Gambians down there. May Allah (SWT)
save this country from going the same route as Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Momodou Camara
--------------------------------
Thousands homeless as immigrant slums torched in Ivory Coast
ABIDJAN, Sept 21 (AFP) - Thousands of tenements in Abidjan shantytowns
dominated by West African immigrants were torched Saturday after a coup
attempt, with residents blaming the paramilitary gendarmerie.
Smoke was curling up from burning wooden huts in a sprawling slum near the
city's Agban gendarmerie camp, one of the key points of fighting when the coup
erupted Thursday, leaving 270 people dead and some 300 wounded, according to
military sources.
An AFP correspondent saw streams of people were leaving the settlement with
their belongings stacked on their heads, on wheelbarrows, in hired taxis and
trucks.
Salifou Sawadoga, one of the representatives of the Burkina Faso embassy in
Abidjan, sent to assess the damage, said: "It's difficult to say but in this
slum alone at least 4,000 huts have been burned.
"If one takes an average figure of 10 persons per hut, which is highly
feasible, it represents 40,000 homeless people here alone," he told AFP,
adding that similar destruction had occurred in other Abidjan slums.
The gendarmerie declined immediate comment.
Sawadoga said President Laurent Gbagbo's assertion in a televised address
late Friday that soldiers behind the uprising had used heavy weaponry that did
not belong to the Ivorian army -- thereby hinting at foreign involvement --
would make matters worse for his countrymen.
"The language he employed was not favourably inclined to people like us,"
he said. "This has prompted the gendarmes to burn the houses."
Gbagbo had earlier implicitly accused foreign countries, notably
neighbouring Burkina Faso, of being behind another abortive coup bid in
January 2001.
Karim Ouedraogo, a young Burkinabe, said the gendarmes had started burning
huts in the slum late Friday and resumed the arson on Saturday morning.
"They took our money, looted our things and gave us five minutes to leave,"
he said. "They used petrol and since most of the shacks are wooden they burnt
quickly."
Others were guarding possessions they managed to salvage -- ranging from
refrigerators, sofas and television sets down to clothes, shoes, buckets and
cooking utensils.
Ironically the slum is near a martyrs' monument erected by President
Laurent Gbagbo in memory of victims of ethnic and political violence that
erupted in 2000 -- the year he came to power in controversial elections.
Franck Kabore, a tailor from Burkina Faso, said he had managed to save his
"tools" -- sewing machine, cloth and thread -- "from the workshop because one
has to live.
"But where I'm going to spend the night, I don't know."
Mohammed Sani, a young Togolese, said the gendarmes "took my gas canister,
cellphone and all my money."
Sani, who has been living in Ivory Coast for four years, said: "Me, I've
had enough. I'm leaving."
But Ivorian national Olivier Grekou, a security guard, heatedly denied that
the action by the gendarmes was targetted at "foreigners only."
"When I came back yesterday evening, the gendarmes were here. They had come
to look for rebels. It's normal because the Agbon camp is just near and they
had got information that some people were hiding here.
"They gave people time to leave. They did not ask whether this house
belongs to an Ivorian or a foreigner before burning it."
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