I can understand their frustrations, but do they have to go on a riot and destroy things and assault people to get their message across?
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ABIDJAN (AFP) - Hundreds of angry inhabitants of Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan rioted, putting up barricades, assaulting a cabinet minister and torching a house over the toxic waste dumping scandal that has claimed seven lives. ADVERTISEMENT
Between 200 and 300 residents of Akouedo district blocked traffic on one of the city's main roads using burning tyres and old refrigerators, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported Friday.
They also set fire to and ransacked the house, an upmarket European-style villa, belonging to Marcel Gossio, the director of the Abidjan Ports Authority which took in hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from a Dutch company before being dumped across the city of four million people.
Gossio was among several state officials suspended late Thursday by Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny over the scandal.
Earlier the residents attacked the country's transport minister, pulling him out of his car and forcing him to inhale toxic fumes from waste dumped in the district nearly a month ago, witnesses said.
The minister, Innocent Anaky Kobeman, was driving through Akouedo district, one of the several affected suburbs, when he was stopped by residents protesting the continued presence of the toxic waste in their neighbourhood.
The protestors pulled him out of his car, roughed him up and led him to a site where the toxic waste was dumped "so that he could also inhale the fumes", one witness said.
Residents said the minister's car was burnt forcing him to be airlifted from the district by a military helicopter, according to an army source.
Akouedo residents took to the streets Friday to express their discontent after smelling afresh a strong odour coming out of the waste dumped in their suburb in late August by an Ivorian firm.
The death toll from the waste poisoning has risen to seven as thousands of residents continue to flood medical clinics fearing they have been poisoned.
The health ministry announced Thursday that 26,000 medical consulations were recorded across the city after the 500-plus tonnes of waste were dumped on 14 open-air rubbish dumps around the city.
Banny, presiding over a skeletal government after his cabinet stepped down over the scandal last week, said Thursday evening that a clean-up operation led by French firm Seche would begin on Sunday.
Seven people, including the heads of the local waste disposal firm Tommy and two other Ivorian companies, have been arrested.
Tommy is blamed for dumping the sludge -- which has caused nausea, rashes, fainting, diarrhoea and headaches -- onto ordinary Abidjan rubbish tips in August.
Dutch-based multinational trading company Trafigura, which operates the Probo Koala cargo ship which unloaded the industrial waste residue, insists it acted lawfully having handed the waste over to Tommy to dispose of correctly.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060915...nvironmentdemo
Why Africa? Why? Why do we sell our beings and souls for silver and gold? Can you believe that some citizen of Ivory Coast actually accepted money, and agreed to dump toxic waste in open areas of the capital city of Abidjan? As a result of this greedy act, at least three people have died and 1,500 been treated in area hospitals! The number could go higher......
UP NIGERIA!!! 
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