ABIDJAN (AFP) - Supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo clashed with French troops in a standoff that killed at least seven people, boosting tensions in Ivory Coast despite an upbeat assessment of peace prospects by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
The violence outside Abidjan's luxury Hotel Ivoire, less than one kilometer (half a mile) from the presidential residence where the heads of state met, took the reported death toll from the week of unrest to 132 people across the divided west African state.
Mbeki left Abidjan after his day-long mission on behalf of the African Union saying he was "pleased" by Gbagbo's commitment to restoring peace.
"I am very encouraged by the work that has been done by the government," he told reporters. "My responsibility now is to report to the president of the African Union."
The South African president has been a key mediator in the two years of turmoil in Ivory Coast, which flared again Thursday with air strikes Gbagbo said he had ordered to "liberate and reunify the country" but which the international community has condemned as a violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire.
The strikes hit Bouake and Korhogo, key strongholds of rebels who have held the north since their botched September 2002 coup sparked a civil war.
Rebel leader Guillaume Soro told AFP in Bouake that 85 civilians were killed but those numbers have not been confirmed.
Nine French troops and a US civilian were killed in a Saturday raid on a French military base in Bouake, which French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has called a "deliberate" attack.
France immediately retaliated, wiping out the Ivorian air force, which US General Charles Wald, the deputy commander of the US European Command, said Tuesday was their absolute right.
"We strongly believe the French took the exact right action," Wald told reporters in Washington.
"They bombed two of the SU-25s (planes) and they disabled two more, and they destroyed six helicopters, which is exactly what should have happened."
Four days of looting, vandalism and street violence in Abidjan ensued, leaving more than 30 people dead through Tuesday morning, an official from the national social welfare ministry told AFP.
"It's the French military who killed them; we haven't yet compiled a final toll, which will no doubt be even higher," the official said.
The rampage by Gbagbo's partisans -- the so-called patriots who have commandeered national television and radio with their anti-French messages -- left some 600 wounded, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
One in four Abidjan homes of Europeans were believed destroyed. French schools were set on fire and dozens of foreign nationals were plucked from their rooftops by helicopters.
Some 2,300 people are sheltering at the headquarters of the UN mission or at the French military base in Abidjan near the airport, which has been under French control since Saturday.
Though France has no firm plans to evacuate its 14,000 nationals, its foreign ministry said it has chartered aircraft to help those who wish to leave.
Spain, too, has chartered a flight to transport its roughly 300 nationals out of Ivory Coast.
A resolution of the crisis cannot come soon enough for the residents of the increasingly isolated rebel-held north, which has been without power, water and telephone service since Thursday.
"If water is not restored soon, the humanitarian consequences could be catastrophic," said Antoine Foucher, Ivory Coast director for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders).
"We are trying to establish quarantine zones to treat the eventual cases of cholera that we expect will be reported in the coming days."
Ivorian traders have suspended exports of the main cash crop cocoa since Monday and the main processing factory was shuttered Sunday.
"Cocoa production cannot move because the roads are blocked by militants or the French army, which is effectively shutting down the entire country," a trader told AFP in London.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council was expected to vote Wednesday on a French resolution proposing sanctions against its west African former colony, to include a 12-month arms embargo, and targeted travel bans and asset freezings.
Ivory Coast's ambassador to the world body, Philippe Djangone-Bi, said he has asked the council for permission to read a statement condemning France for committing "a flagrant violation of Ivory Coast sovereignty."
11/09/2004 - 20:42 GMT - AFP