Lebanese Await Evacuation Plane in Abidjan as Fighting Intensifies
A Middle East Airlines plane that was scheduled to evacuate Lebanese from conflict-torn Ivory Coast on Saturday morning was delayed again to guarantee the flight’s safety, Voice of Lebanon radio station reported Saturday.
The MEA flight will now leave on Saturday night rather than 8:00 am, it said after authorities in the African country opened air traffic.
Some 500 foreigners, including Lebanese sought refuge in the French military camp of Port-Bouet in the south of Abidjan after fighting shook the city on Thursday and Friday.
VDL said that Caretaker Premier Saad Hariri would telephone his French counterpart and the foreign minister on Saturday to ask for assistance for the Lebanese expatriates.
Troops loyal to internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara, who has been unable to take office since a November election, swept through the country this week, arriving in Abidjan on Thursday in what was said to be the final assault on cornered strongman Laurent Gbagbo’s fighters.
A high-ranking official at the foreign ministry in Beirut said the Lebanese community was not being singled out for acts of violence, amid reports of looting and chaos in Abidjan. “The targets of the looting are not only Lebanese but also Ivorian,” the director general of the foreign ministry, Haitham Joumaa, told The Daily Star in remarks published Saturday.
“Looting and lawlessness has swept through the Ivorian cities but there is no specific danger to the Lebanese community,” Joumaa added, in response to reports that the Lebanese expatriates were falling victim to looting and other crimes.
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