FRENCH TROOPS FIRING INDISCRIMINATELY ON CIVILIANS? LGF has video.

UPDATE: More claims of a massacre here. Why isn’t this getting more attention?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey cautions:

From what I’ve seen thus far, it appears to show French troops shooting indiscriminately at African civilians. A number of deaths appear to have occurred at this incident, including several women. In fact, it seems like most of the dead were women, but that may have been because the cameraman focused on those victims. And that, just like the Marine shooting the faker in the mosque last week, may be the problem.

The video is highly subjective. Just like with any home movie, it starts and stops at different times with no particular purpose, and no time sequences are shown. When the firing starts, you can’t see who’s shooting, where it’s aimed, or why. In fact, you never see soldiers shooting, at least in part II — you just hear the shots and see the aftermath. Just as with the video in Iraq, the entire presentation lacks context. Who starts the shooting? Did anyone in the crowd have weapons and fire back, or fire first? So far, I can’t tell.

Perhaps this might be the French Amritsar, but the video shown doesn’t prove it; it merely suggests it. Before we leap to conclusions, we need a bit more evidence than these videos provide.

I hope we’ll see some reporting on the subject. Certainly Reuters would be all over something like this if U.S. troops were involved. . . .

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s what Reuters has at the moment:

France vigorously rejected on Sunday charges by Ivory Coast’s president and its leading Roman Catholic cleric that French troops had beheaded young protesters there, dismissing the statements as outrageous disinformation. . . .Alliot-Marie accused Ivory Coast’s leaders of manipulating crowds of protesters in an extremely dangerous way.

“The racist and xenophobe statements made about us by Ivory Coast leaders are intolerable,” she said.

It’s datelined Paris, though, not Abidjan.