ABIDJAN (AFP) - Ivory Coast government forces carried out bombing raids of former rebels on the country's main northern town, Ivory Coast military officials told AFP.
"The bombing of Korhogo has started and will continue through the night," the officials said.
The latest raids, close to the border with Mali and Burkina Faso, came after three earlier air attacks on the central town of Bouake where the headquarters of the former rebel New Forces (FN) are located. The FN have been in control of the north of the country since a failed coup in September 2002.
French military officials meanwhile said that two civilians were killed and five others wounded in air raids by Ivory Coast armed forces against rebel positions in the center and north of the troubled African country.
"It looks like there were casualties among the civilian population," French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told the press in the western French town of Angers, adding that two people may have been killed.
A military official added that five civilians had been wounded.
Alliot-Marie said the air raids had been "absolutely dramatic".
"This is not the right way to restore stability in Ivory Coast," she said, adding: "We condemn these acts."
In the raids on Bouake, at least two Sukhoi 25 planes hit the FN headquarters and a television transmitter among other targets.
A high-ranking military source in Ivory Coast had said earlier that government forces carried out "limited and targeted strikes" against positions held by former rebels in the center of the divided west African country.
French and UN troops are monitoring a fragile ceasefire signed by both sides in the war as part of plans to reform the political system and reunite the country, where civil war broke out in September 2002.
Since a rebel insurgency began in September 2002, the country has been split in two, with the south under government control and the north and parts of the west in rebel hands.
11/04/2004 - 20:10 GMT - AFP