ABIDJAN (AFP) - Top Ivory Coast and French officials appealed for calm, pledging to cooperate to put down a wave of unrest that left at least 13 dead and hundreds injured in the divided west African state.
The UN Security Council, meanwhile, was debating a French proposal for an arms embargo against Ivory Coast, which was split between rebel and government zones after a failed coup in September 2002 erupted into civil war.
The world's top cocoa producer has been rocked by violence since Thursday, when Ivorian air strikes strafed the rebel strongholds of Bouake and Korhogo in what President Laurent Gbagbo called an operation to "liberate and reunite the country."
After nine of its troops and a US civilian were killed in the last of the air raids on Saturday, France responded by destroying most of Ivory Coast's aircraft, which inflamed anti-French sentiment in the former French colony and sent thousands of people into the streets.
Mob violence left one in four Abidjan homes owned by Europeans looted and vandalized, while foreign residents told AFP of being dragged from their cars and beaten, their watches and jewelry stolen.
But Ivorian parliamentary speaker Mamadou Koulibaly, who had stoked xenophobic fires at the weekend after French forces wiped out the Ivorian air force in retaliation for a air strike that killed nine French soldiers and a US civilian, said Monday that the time for belligerence had passed.
"We are proceeding towards calm so as to resume economic activity," he said after a meeting at the Hotel Ivoire with French and Ivorian military officials at which he proposed joint patrols by French and Ivorian security forces to help restore order.
"We tempted catastrophe," added armed forces chief General Mathias Doue. "We are urging everyone to stay calm and to help return life to normal as soon as possible."
French General Henri Poncet emerged from the meeting seeking to reaffirm the mission of the 4,000 French troops patrolling a ceasefire in place since May 2003.
"Our objective is to reassure the expatriate community and to secure residents in the Ivorian economic capital from being robbed or injured," he said of Operation Unicorn, which has been reinforced since Sunday by several hundred soldiers.
"We have no intention of overthrowing President Gbagbo," he said, hoping to counter rumors that resulted in a standoff with warning shots fired earlier Monday at the Hotel Ivoire between French troops and Gbagbo partisans called into the streets by national radio.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, citing hospital officials in Abidjan, said Monday that more than 400 people were injured in the violence, including some with wounds from heavy weapons.
"The number of dead remains approximate but we fear that it will also be high," the ICRC said from Geneva.
Prices for cocoa, Ivory Coast's main export, soared to a three-month high Monday on London's futures market amid fears of further violence.
Spain has begun making preparations to evacuate its nationals, while the shipping company DHL is sending the families of their employees away from Abidjan until further notice.
Another 800 foreigners have sought refuge at the headquarters of the UN mission in Ivory Coast (ONUCI), while a French military base has taken in another 1,200 panicked civilians.
France, however, has ruled out the immediate evacuation of the 14,000 French nationals remaining in the former French colony, most of whom are in Abidjan.
"Today has been marked by highs and lows; at the end of the morning there was incredible tension due to calls to protest and then the situation calmed somewhat," French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told reporters at a hospital in Saint-Mande, where she was visiting some of the wounded troops.
"But calm is returning, and our ties are being restored."
South African President Thabo Mbeki was due in Abidjan Tuesday as the African Union's envoy to mediate an end to the crisis. He joined other worried African states including Algeria, Senegal and Mali in calling for an end to hostilities.
The United States also appealed to Gbagbo to end the hostilities and offered its strong support to the "necessary" decision taken by France to destroy Ivory Coast's military aircraft.
11/08/2004 - 23:09 GMT - AFP