ABIDJAN (AFP) - Ivory Coast was back on a war footing after clashes in the main city Abidjan between reinforced French military troops and partisans of President Laurent Gbagbo called into the streets by their hardline leaders.
France also moved to quell speculation, fired by Gbagbo's ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), that its decision to send in an additional 700 troops was an attempt to destabilize the former west African French colony.
"We are not here to destabilize Ivory Coast and its institutions, or to take part in the destabilization of the country," Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in a statement.
"We want only to preserve constitutional legality and to secure the country. Nothing else. To secure it, not to destabilize it."
A French military position was targeted Saturday by a government air strike, which killed nine French troops and a US civilian in the central rebel stronghold of Bouake, once the second city in the world's top cocoa producer.
The attack was "deliberate," Barnier said Sunday.
In an immediate riposte, French President Jacques Chirac ordered the destruction of two jets on the ground at the airport in the capital Yamoussoukro as well as at least three attack helicopters, effectively eliminating the Ivorian air force.
Chirac said the planes had been violating the country's ceasefire in raids on the rebel-held north.
Sunday's deployment of additional French troops followed a night of fierce clashes between the French military and thousands of Gbagbo partisans advancing on Abidjan's international airport to wrest it from French hands.
At least three people were killed in the clashes, which involved a French 20 mm cannon, according to state radio. The French military has vigorously denied claims from the Gbagbo government that 30 people were shot dead.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said late Sunday the situation in Ivory Coast was "under control" but still "tense".
The speaker of the Ivorian parliament Mamadou Koulibaly, a Gbagbo loyalist, warned France faced a "long, hard war" with its nationals risking death at the hands of the "patriot" mob.
"Vietnam will be nothing compared with what we are going to do here," he said. "Ivorian authorities consider themselves now to be rebels against the French power which Jacques Chirac is trying to install."
FPI leader Pascal Affi N'Guessan also took to the airwaves urging patriots to "descend massively into the streets and all the cities of the country this minute to prevent, by any means, the free movement of any foreign force."
Four French schools have been sacked or destroyed and "patriots" have begun a hunt for Westerners, conducting door-to-door searches in upmarket Abidjan neighborhoods.
Ivorian military spokesman Colonel Jules Yao Yao ramped the rhetoric higher Sunday afternoon, lauding the will of the security and defense forces to ensure the reunification of the country, which has been divided since a failed coup in September 2002 sparked a civil war.
"We ask our security and defense forces to remain mobilized, to maintain the will to reunify the country," he said in a televised address.
The weekend tensions mark the worst crisis to hit Franco-Ivorian relations since independence in 1960, leading Paris to terminate its policy of strict neutrality and take decisive military action to curb Gbagbo's forces.
France has moved to boost its presence in Ivory Coast to 5,300 troops, including the 4,000-strong Unicorn force, which along with 6,000 UN peacekeepers patrols a buffer zone separating the rebel north from the government south.
Gbagbo supporters have repeatedly accused the French peacekeepers of siding with the rebel New Forces, who retain control of the north even as it is increasingly cut off from the rest of the country.
Residents of the northern town of Korhogo, on the border with Burkina Faso, say there has been no electricity or water since Thursday. Phone service was cut off on Sunday, an AFP journalist said.
"Without water, electricity or telephone we have been reduced to animals," said a Korhogo resident.
In the economic capital Abidjan, French interests were being protected by 600 men at the base of the 43rd marine infantry battalion near the airport, which French troops closed to civilian flights and placed under their control.
Some 14,000 French nationals -- the majority of whom hold double citizenship -- live in Ivory Coast, most of them concentrated around Abidjan.
The African Union on Sunday mandated South African President Thabo Mbeki to launch an "urgent mission" in coming days to resolve the Ivorian crisis.
The grouping on Saturday sharply rebuked the Ivory Coast government for an escalation that "clearly contradicts the process of national reconciliation."
The UN Security Council, which held emergency talks at France's request, will meet on Tuesday to discuss "new measures" including an arms embargo to be imposed against Ivory Coast.
The United States warned its citizens against travel to Ivory Coast, while the Dutch, Belgium and Swiss governments advised their nationals in Ivory Coast to stay home, and Kenya Airways and Belgium's SN Brussels Airlines (ex-Sabena) cancelled all flights.
11/07/2004 - 19:51 GMT - AFP