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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Machete-waving mobs looted and burned in Ivory Coast's largest cities Sunday, laying siege to a French military base and searching house to house for French families after a day of sudden clashes between forces of France and its former colony.
France's military sent helicopters to pluck trapped expatriates from buildings as other helicopters and armored vehicles moved out to confront the mobs, lobbing volleys of tear gas and percussion grenades that sent rioters fleeing.
French gunships took up positions at bridges in skyscraper-lined Abidjan on Sunday, a day after seizing control of the country's two airports and flying in 600 reinforcements.
Faced with the confrontation with France, the Ivory Coast government reluctantly moved to call off its offensive against rebels who control the northern part of the country. The government broke a more than year-old cease-fire last week by launching airstrikes against the rebels.
The government said Sunday it was willing to cease fire and that it would pull back its troops. French retaliation on Saturday for a surprise bombing of French peacekeepers destroyed Ivory Coast's tiny air force and left its airports under French control.
The government took a defiant tone toward France. Ivory Coast will ask the U.N. Security Council for action against France, presidential spokesman Desire Tagro told The Associated Press. "We are faced with aggression by one country against another country. We are going to inform the entire world ... that France has come to attack us."
The United States on Sunday warned its citizens to avoid traveling to Ivory Coast because of widespread violence.
About 4,000 French and 6,000 U.N. troops are posted in Ivory Coast, manning a buffer zone between the loyalist south and the north, held by rebels since civil war broke out in September 2002 in the world's top cocoa producer. The foreign presence aims to hold together a country vital to stability of a troubled region.
France's retaliation destroying the military's five helicopter gunships and two Russian-made Sukhoi warplanes came after the Sukhois bombed a French peacekeeping position in the north, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American consultant working for an aid group.
Mob violence after France's response claimed more victims. A Red Cross official, Kim Gordon-Bates, said about 150 people had been wounded in Abidjan, most from bullets. The official refused to give any information on deaths.
State television showed the bodies of what it said were five loyalists killed by French forces.
About 300 French troop reinforcements landed Sunday at Abidjan's international airport, which was taken by France late Saturday after it destroyed what it said was the entire Ivory Coast air force _
Another 300 reinforcements would be sent from France, the French Defense Ministry said. Three French military planes, including a medical support aircraft, were en route to Ivory Coast, while three French military Mirage fighter jets were on standby in the West African nation of Gabon.
Still more reinforcements headed toward Abidjan on Sunday afternoon from the capital, Yamoussoukro, to confront the mobs.
An Associated Press photographer saw 20 heavy vehicles bearing French troops heading toward Abidjan a city in flames.
Gunfire rang out in the city and smoke billowed into the air from throngs laying waste to both foreign and locally owned property.
Loyalists set up roadblocks of burning tires. An Associated Press reporter watched as a crowd armed with machetes and iron bars entered a neighborhood near the city's main French military base, demanding to know if there were any French living in the district.
"It's better to kill the whites than steal their stuff," one rioter shouted.
"It's better to burn them, like in Algeria. They burned the whites that's why they're respected," another said.
Foreigners cowered.
"We are all terrified, and try to reassure each other," one French resident said by telephone from his home elsewhere in the city, speaking on condition his name be withheld.
"We have been told by the embassy to stay at home ... It is a difficult situation to live through," he said.
Also in danger: hundreds of thousands of immigrants from neighboring Muslim countries.
"We're afraid because who knows, maybe this is civil war," said one, hiding with 30 other Muslims in a mosque Sunday. He gave only his last name, Ouedraogo.
A French military helicopter swept in Sunday to rescue trapped civilians, apparently expatriates, from an Abidjan hotel, airlifting about a dozen to safety with their suitcases.
Numerous French families contacted French authorities in Ivory Coast overnight, saying their homes were being attacked and looted, French military spokesman Henry Aussavy said. Electricity and phone lines at the French Embassy were cut, spokesman Francois Guenon said.
Rioting persisted despite demands France and from the U.N. Security Council that President Laurent Gbagbo restore order. France warned of international sanctions.
Ivory Coast leaders sounded alternately conciliatory and challenging.
"Let us cease fire," National Assembly president Mamadou Koulibaly said on state television, offering to return to a more than year-old calm broken by Ivory Coast's resumption of attacks on Thursday.
Speaking to French radio Inter, however, Koulibaly accused French President Jacques Chirac of arming Ivory Coast's rebels and of sabotaging Ivory Coast's government.
"Ivory Coast has become an overseas territory in Jacques Chirac's head," said Koulibaly, Ivory Coast's second-highest leader.
