Global Policy Forum

By Somini Sengupta

France sent hundreds more troops to the Ivory Coast commercial center of Abidjan on Sunday, as government loyalists went on a violent rampage taking aim at the homes and businesses of French citizens there, a day after an airstrike by government jets killed nine French peacekeepers. On Sunday, the government of President Laurent Gbagbo said it had ceased fire and ordered its troops to stop a full-scale offensive on rebel-held territory that began Thursday. The action occurred as the United Nations Security Council discussed concentrated penalties, including an arms embargo and travel bans against people responsible for violating an internationally monitored cease-fire in the country.

Mr. Gbagbo, whose troops began the offensive last week, appeared on state-run television on Sunday night and told his supporters to refrain from all attacks against foreigners in the country. "I am asking all the demonstrators to return home," Reuters quoted him as saying. "You must not give in to provocation." The latest violence occurred after two government warplanes struck a French Army position near Bouaké in the north on Saturday, killing nine French soldiers and an American civilian. The United Nations, European Union and African Union have condemned the Ivoirian airstrike.

The French retaliated immediately Saturday, sending troops to destroy almost all of the country's combat aircraft, including the two jets involved in the airstrike and at least three attack helicopters, and securing strategic locations in Abidjan, including the main airport. Throughout the day on Sunday, angry mobs attacked French citizens, as well as other Europeans and Arabs mistaken as French, and looted and rioted across Abidjan, news agency reports said. French soldiers secured vital points in and around Abidjan, and began using helicopters to airlift Europeans to safety.

Mr. Gbagbo's supporters accuse the French of aiding the rebel uprising and trying to depose their president - a charge the French have repeatedly denied. The French defense minister, Michí¨le Alliot-Marie, said Sunday that France had deployed an additional 600 troops to Ivory Coast. She told reporters in Paris that the latest reinforcements were not intended "to destabilize Ivoirian institutions." "Our forces are there to allow this country to recover peace, which is to say to allow for dialogue to resume between the different Ivoirian parties," she said. French officials said they had no immediate plans to evacuate the roughly 14,000 French citizens living in the former French colony.

Once an affluent and politically stable oasis in West Africa, Ivory Coast fell into chaos in September 2002 after a coup attempt that devolved into a rebellion and partitioned the country between rebel-held north and government-held south. Religious tensions have further complicated the conflict: northerners are primarily Muslim, while the south is Christian-dominated. In Abidjan, pro-Gbagbo militants, dressed in their signature T-shirts bearing the motto "xenophobe," have been repeatedly accused of attacking northerners. In March, a government crackdown on an opposition protest left 120 people dead. State-run radio and television on Sunday broadcast what United Nations officials called a barrage of "hate language" intended to whip up hysteria. "This has been a night and day of hate messages," said Jean-Victor Nkolo, a spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, said by telephone from Abidjan.

French troops in the country, once numbering about 4,500 and soon to top 5,000 after the recent reinforcements, have been monitoring the buffer zone between government and rebel-held land since the conflict began. In addition, 6,240 blue-helmeted United Nations peacekeepers are posted across the country. In a statement issued Saturday, the Security Council bolstered the authority of United Nations peacekeepers to take all necessary means "to prevent any hostile action," Mr. Nkolo said. Previously, those troops had been entrusted with monitoring the cease-fire between government and insurgent troops.

In New York, discussions were under way among members of the Security Council to impose penalties. "It is for the Security Council to see what is feasible in this area to strengthen the signal that violence is a dead-end street," the spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, Hervé Ladsous, said Sunday.

Ariane Bernard contributed reporting from Paris for this article.

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