IVORY COAST: Hundreds of youths fought running battles with police yesterday, and then staged a sit-in outside a French military base in Ivory Coast in a third day of protests that have rocked the country's main city.
The youths want some 4,000 French troops to quit a ceasefire line between the rebel-held north and government-held south of the world's top cocoa grower, a former French colony which plunged into civil war last year.
Around 100 police armed with assault rifles blocked roads around the heavily-fortified base in Abidjan, facing off with stone-throwing protesters who defied a government ban on demonstrations announced late on Tuesday.
By early afternoon, calm had returned outside the base, and the demonstrators pledged to carry on their protest peacefully.
"I am not here for an anti-French demonstration. I am here so that the French army forces the rebels to disarm. Or else let them (the French) leave the front line so that the Ivorian army can free the country," said student leader Mr Charles Ble Goude, a confidant of President Laurent Gbagbo.
The protests and weekend demands by renegade soldiers for the French to leave have fed fears that fighting could again erupt in Ivory Coast.
"Tell your leaders we are determined to fight (against the rebels) even if it means loss of life," Mr Richard Dakoury, another leader of the so-called Young Patriots, told a French officer who came out of the base to talk to the protesters.
Although the war was declared over in July, Ivory Coast is still divided, and frustrations are mounting on both sides at a no-war, no-peace situation. The rebels pulled out of a unity government in September, accusing Mr Gbagbo of undermining a French-brokered peace deal.
The conflict has also inflamed anti-French sentiment, with both sides accusing French soldiers of supporting the enemy.
French schools were closed yesterday for the first time since the protests erupted on Monday. - (Reuters)