IVORY COAST Foreigners evacuate despite assurances from government

Nearly 4,000 foreigners have been flown out, officials said.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Frightened Westerners -- many of them longtime residents of this former African economic success story -- piled into buses, boats and planes Saturday as a French-run evacuation built, despite government promises to protect the expatriates from a surge of anti-foreigner violence.
As calm returned to the war-divided country, African leaders redoubled efforts to resolve a crisis they say threatens regional stability.
But in a potentially ominous sign, President Laurent Gbagbo appointed a hard-liner Saturday as new army chief of staff, replacing a popular, moderate general.
The new chief of staff, Col. Maj. Phillipe Mangou, was the field commander responsible for last week's air campaign in which Ivory Coast warplanes bombed a French military post, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American civilian, and plunging the West African nation into its current crisis.
Leaving
France, Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler, and other countries have flown out nearly 4,000 foreigners since Wednesday, embassy officials said, in what they expect will be one of the largest evacuations from Africa in post-independence times.
Most of those leaving are French, but they also include hundreds of Americans, Britons, Dutch, Spaniards and Lebanese. Private companies have evacuated an additional 470 of their employees.
Gbagbo's office issued a statement late Friday urging foreigners to stay, saying it was taking steps to assure their safety. But after more than two years of intermittent civil war, many Westerners were skeptical of Gbagbo's assurances.
"I can still hear the crowd screaming," said Monique Philippe, who moved here 40 years ago with her Ivorian husband and has two Ivorian children. "Many houses were looted and burned."
She was sheltering with scores of others at the luxury Golf Hotel, where French forces are gathering Westerners before transferring them in barges to a military base and flying them out of the country. Every day, she watches more friends leave, unsure whether to join them.
"It may be calmer now, but it is not over," Philippe said.
Busloads of Westerners continued to pull up at Abidjan's airport, under heavy French guard, to catch evacuation flights Saturday. But French military officials said about 200 others under their protection had decided to stay.
"If it wasn't for my son, I wouldn't leave," said a lifelong resident identifying herself as Esther and waiting with her mother and 16-year-old son to board a French military barge. "The schools have been burned. I have to put him in school in France."
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