![]() 500 hurt in Ivory Coast clashes From correspondents in Abidjan 09nov04 "MUCH more" than 500 people have been wounded in clashes in Ivory Coast's largest city, and loyalist mobs are blocking efforts to tend to the injured, a Red Cross official said today. "God knows" how many other people have been killed, Red Cross official Kim Gordon-Bates said. Red Cross workers were trying to set up an emergency clinic in one neighbourhood today but were being prevented by Ivory Coast loyalists massed in the third day of anti-French clashes. "The situation is very tense. I'm in the middle of a riot," Mr Gordon-Bates said. On Saturday, Mr Gordon-Bates had reported 150 people injured, most from bullets. He said the toll had climbed to "over 500 wounded - much more than that" today. Clashes broke out on Saturday, after French troops destroyed the air force of its former colony in retaliation for an Ivory Coast airstrike in the rebel-held north that killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker. With most of Abidjan's civilians still isolated in their homes and neighbourhoods, no figure for any deaths have emerged. State TV yesterday showed pictures of what it said were five loyalists killed by French forces trying to quell the violence.
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