UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 (AFP) - The UN Security Council, meeting in special session late Saturday, prepared to condemn an attack on French forces in Ivory Coast, where at least 10 people died, including nine French soldiers and a US citizen.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan attended the meeting, which was requested by France.
A draft of a statement the Security Council was to issue, obtained by AFP, said the council "condemns the attack committed against French forces at Bouake" in central Ivory Coast.
It also condemned "the bloody air strikes carried out in the north of the country by the national armed forces of the Ivory Coast," which "constituted violations of the May 3, 2003 cease fire agreement."
It demanded "an immediate cessation of all military operations and complete respect for the cease fire."
Earlier Saturday, French forces destroyed two Ivory Coast warplanes in Abidjan after a devastating aerial assault on an army camp, which killed eight French soldiers and the US citizen, the French president's office said in a statement.
A ninth soldier -- one of 23 wounded in the raid -- later died from his wounds, French UN Ambassador Jean Marc de La Sabliere said.
In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac ordered the destruction of any other aircraft that violated the cease fire and his office announced that two companies of troops were being rushed to the area to buttress the 4,000 French peacekeepers.
In addition, Paris scrambled three Mirage fighter jets from Chad to Libreville, Gabon.
Fighting erupted between French and Ivorian troops at Abidjan airport, according to a French army spokesman, and skirmishes were also reported between Ivorian government troops and rebel forces near Bouake, where a UN spokesman said artillery exchanges could be heard.
The slide toward renewed civil war as government forces bombarded rebel positions in the northern part of the country drew a sharp rebuke from the African Union, which accused the government of going back on solemn agreements to work for national reconciliation.
France said two Russian-built Sukhoi 25 Frogfoot fighter-bombers of the Ivorian air force hit a French encampment in the central rebel stronghold of Bouake, killing and injuring soldiers from its Unicorn peacekeeping force.
Meanwhile, a French high school in an up-market district of Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan, was set on fire by anti-French demonstrators in the former French colony.
In attacks apparently ordered by President Laurent Gbagbo, government jets Thursday began pounding cities in the north of the country, which has been under the control of the rebel New Forces since September 2002, when an insurrection erupted in the wake of a failed military coup.
The attacks were the most serious cease fire violation since the French-brokered Marcoussis agreement in January of last year that was intended to bring the rebel leaders into a unity government.
11/06/2004 22:13 GMT - AFP