French troops face mob violence in Ivory Coast

French armoured vehicles took up positions near Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo’s home today prompting thousands of his angry supporters, fearing an overthrow attempt, to march to the scene.

The heads of the Ivory Coast and the French mission militaries appeared jointly on state TV to appeal in the West African nation for calm as French troops fired warning shots to ward off angry throngs filling the streets around Gbagbo’s home in Abidjan.

“It is absolutely not a matter of overthrowing President Laurent Gbagbo,” French General Henri Poncet declared, as Ivorian army chief of state General Matthias Doue urged rioters to go home.

A Red Cross official said his agency alone has handled ”over 500 wounded - much more than that” in anti-foreigner mob violence that broke out on Saturday after France wiped out Ivory Coast’s air force in retaliation for an Ivory Coast air strike that killed nine French peacekeepers and one American aid worker.

Asked how many had died in the rampages, in which machete-waving mobs confronted French troops, looted and burned property and went door to door in search of French citizens, Red Cross official Kim Gordon-Bates said: ”God knows.”

Two Abidjan hospitals said they had handled a total of five dead and 250 wounded in this morning’s violence alone, with at least three of the dead killed by gunshots.

Tensions crossed Ivory Coast’s borders, with UN officials saying that more than 1,000 refugees had fled into neighbouring Liberia. Guinea, to the north, said it was sending military reinforcements to its own border.

The confrontation between France and its one-time prize colony and the subsequent turmoil threatens to undermine stability across the region, where the world’s largest UN deployment is trying to help Ivory Coast and two neighbouring countries recover from devastating civil wars.

The mayhem also escalates the violent downward spiral of Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and, until a 1999 coup, the most prosperous and peaceful nation in West Africa.

Trying to quash the attacks, French forces over the weekend seized Ivory Coast’s main airports and took control of bridges and other strategic points, firing volleys at tear gas and percussion grenades to break up rampaging crowds.