ABIDJAN (AFP) - An exodus from Ivory Coast began with a first planeload of French nationals while thousands of Ivorians fled to escape a week of deadly violence, amid new tensions that sent thousands into Abidjan's streets.
The first of four planned flights took off Wednesday afternoon, carrying 270 of the 14,000 French nationals in France's former star colony in west Africa, the world's top cocoa producer.
"It is time for the Ivorian government to take responsibility for restoring public order," French President Jacques Chirac told a cabinet meeting. "We are doing what we can to help our compatriots leave Ivory Coast."
Wednesday's flights will carry about 1,000 people, foreign ministry spokeswoman Cecile Pozzo di Borgo said, enough to ease the strain on the French military base near the airport that has since Saturday hosted some 1,300 panicked foreigners fleeing a torrent of mob violence.
Belgium, Canada, Italy, Germany and Spain will also evacuate nationals, while Russia and the United States have yet to announce plans to do the same.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR has warned of a crisis should the situation continue to deteriorate in Ivory Coast, once a beacon of stability for troubled west Africa but now a flashpoint for unrest that could disrupt the fragile peace settling over its neighbors after decades of war.
UNHCR spokeswoman Francesca Fontanini told AFP from Monrovia that "at least" 5,000 Ivorians have arrived in Liberia's northeastern Nimba County since Thursday, when government forces started bombarding key rebel positions in the north.
"Everyone is very frightened. We are preparing ourselves for even more people coming," she said.
Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has called the air strikes on Korhogo and Bouake an operation "to liberate and reunify the country" divided between rebel north and government south since a failed September 2002 coup sparked a civil war.
The raids have been widely condemned as a violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire reached under a January 2003 peace pact to address root causes of the uprising such as nationality, land ownership and eligibility for president for the country's 17 million people -- one quarter of whom have roots elsewhere.
Rebel leader Guillaume Soro told AFP that at least 85 civilians were killed in three days of raids that were followed by cuts in power, water and telephone services across the north, but those figures have not been confirmed.
A final raid Saturday by Gbagbo's forces hit a French military camp in Bouake, killing nine French soldiers and a US civilian in what French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has called a "deliberate" attack.
France riposted by wiping out most of the small Ivorian air force, seizing the airport and sending tanks onto the bridges spanning Abidjan's lagoon.
The aggressive response sent anti-French sentiment soaring. Gbagbo partisans commandeered national radio and television with "hate" messages urging protesters into the streets to loot, injure and, according to humanitarian sources in Abidjan, rape.
The "patriots" were on the streets again Wednesday, heading towards the upmarket Cocody district that has been ruthlessly pillaged and into the downtown Plateau area to "defend" the national radio station, which blared snippets of Ivorian reggae icon Alpha Blondy's anthem against the French military.
Confrontations between the French military and Gbagbo's supporters have been violent and bloody, with a clash late Tuesday turning the parking lot of the luxury Hotel Ivoire, a kilometer (half-mile) from Gbagbo's residence, into a bloodbath.
At least seven people were killed, hospital sources said. French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie denied Wednesday that troops had fired on civilians, discounting accusations by senior Gbagbo adviser Alain Toussaint that 50 civilians have died in "massacres" by French troops.
The violence trumps the upbeat assessment Tuesday by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who emerged "pleased" from a two-hour meeting with Gbagbo about his Ivorian counterpart's commitment to peace.
Opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, whose Rally for Republicans party headquarters were torched in the violence, is to travel Thursday to meet Mbeki as part of an African Union bid to restore calm, the South African foreign ministry said.
It is because of Ouattara, an enormously popular former prime minister, that the constitution was amended to deny those born from immigrant parents the chance to run for president.

11/10/2004 - 17:39 GMT - AFP