IVORY COAST: Dumped toxic waste sparks protests in Ivorian city

Youths blocked roads in Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan on Wednesday (September 6) to protest at the dumping of toxic waste around the city which doctors said killed a nine-year-old girl and made hundreds ill. Authorities said the pungent waste which contained hydrogen sulphide was unloaded from a Panamanian-registered ship at Abidjan port on August 19 and then dumped in at least eight sites around the densely populated lagoon-side city. Hundreds of residents of Abidjan, the West African country's main city, have complained of suffering from nausea, sore chests, vomiting and diarrhoea, doctors said. A nine-year-old girl who lived in a suburb where some of the waste had been left died after complaining of breathing difficulties and a bleeding nose, a manager of a local hospital, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. Residents said they were trying to put pressure on government officials to respond to the emergency. Angry youths blocked some city roads with branches and boulders, preventing medical staff from getting to hospital where dozens lined up for treatment, some wearing paper masks. In TV broadcasts, the government appealed for the protesters to let medical personnel through and police later fired tear-gas to try to disperse them. But many questioned the urgency of the response, questioning whether there was actually a cure for the cause of the symptoms. The government held an emergency meeting in the political capital Yamoussoukro to work out a response and requested international help to analyse the substance and work out how the city could be decontaminated. Three people associated with the company responsible for unloading the ship have been arrested. Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer and one foreign exporter said it had closed one of its warehouses near Abidjan's vast port because staff exposed to the fumes felt unwell. Residents in the city speculated anxiously about the exact nature of the toxic waste which gave off a sharp odour similar to cooking gas. Some feared it would turn out to be radioactive and one daily newspaper branded the incident an "Ivorian Chernobyl", a reference to the world's worst civil nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

ITN Source | September 7, 2006

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