Marchers back Ivory Coast leader
French, Ivorian generals appeal for calm
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Ivory Coast's leader has appealed for order as French armored vehicles took up positions around his home to disperse protesters gathered to protect him.
Thousands of President Laurent Gbagbo's supporters marched near his residence in the capital of Abidjan on Monday, fearing troops from France might attempt to oust the leader of its former West African colony.
Fifty armored vehicles have surrounded the president's home, presidential spokesman Desire Tagro told The Associated Press.
"Their presence here is scaring people. They're crying, and they think that President Gbagbo is going to be overthrown," Tagro said in a telephone interview with AP.
The French have denied surrounding the house or intending to oust Gbagbo, the news agency reported, saying the forces were only securing a temporary base at a hotel a couple hundred yards away for foreign evacuations.
But Ivorians say the French are housing opposition leader Alassane Ouatarra, who was disqualified from the 2000 election that put Gbagbo in office, and plan to oust the president in favor of Ouatarra.
A worker at the Hotel Ivoire told AP by telephone that French troops had fired warning shots to hold back the crowd.
South African President Thabo Mbeki meanwhile is expected in Ivory Coast on Tuesday to try to defuse the crisis, Reuters reports.
Mbeki has been mandated by the African Union to try to bring peace to the world's biggest cocoa grower.
A weekend of unrest by machete-waving mobs confronting French troops has left more than 500 people wounded, a Red Cross official said. Two Abidjan hospitals told AP they handled a total of five dead and 250 wounded in Monday's violence alone, with at least three killed by gunshots.
The commanders of Ivory Coast and French forces appeared jointly on state television to appeal for calm.
"Everything should go back to normal," Gen. Henri Poncet said on state TV. "It is absolutely not a matter of ousting President Laurent Gbagbo."
Gen. Matthias Doue, Ivorian chief of army staff, urged rioters to go home, adding: "I call on people to remain calm."
Despite the appeal, the protest swelled by several thousand people by late afternoon.
Protesters chanted against the French, yelling, "The whites don't like the blacks, but we don't care!" Some signs declared, "Ivory Coast is a sovereign state."
A standoff arose outside Abidjan as well, as several hundred loyalist youths stood on a main road, blocking a 70-vehicle, heavily armed convoy of French reinforcements trying to enter the city.
Gbagbo, in a televised address Sunday, called on citizens to "remain calm, and I ask them not to give in to provocations."
"And I'm asking all the demonstrators to go back home," he said.
The fighting began Saturday when Ivory Coast warplanes bombed a French position near Bouake in the north. The move killed nine French peacekeepers and an American citizen and violated a cease-fire between the government and rebels.
"Before inquiries attribute responsibility concerning the circumstances of the death of the French soldiers and the American civilian, I express the regrets of Ivory Coast for events which got out of control, and I express my compassion and condolences to the families of the Ivorian, French and American victims. I wish them a swift recovery," Gbagbo said.
The French retaliated by destroying two Russian-built Sukhoi 25 aircraft at Yamoussoukro Airport, where the Ivory Coast government has based its operations against rebel movements.
In addition, the French Defense Ministry said it destroyed three helicopters in Yamoussoukro, the nation's seat of government, in what it called a pre-emptive strike. Machete-wielding mobs then went house to house searching for French families, most of whom fled Saturday night to a French military base.
In Abidjan, mobs marched and looters ran through some neighborhoods, carrying TVs, fans and lamps.
The three days of fighting broke a 2003 cease-fire between the rebel-held north and government-controlled south.
France has about 4,000 peacekeepers in Ivory Coast. The United Nations has about 6,000, manning a buffer zone between rebel north and government south.
On Monday, French military planes returned home the bodies of the nine French soldiers killed in the bombing, along with 34 wounded soldiers.
In Paris, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie rejected accounts by some Ivory Coast officials that the bombing was a mistake and urged the reopening of peace talks.
In Ethiopia, the African Union upheld the U.N. and French intervention in Ivory Coast.
"We do not condemn the action of the French forces," said Republic of Congo Foreign Minister Rodolphe Adada, who chaired an emergency session Monday on Ivory Coast. "In fact, the action of the French forces have contributed to the restoration of peace and security."
At the United Nations, a draft Security Council resolution circulated Monday called for an arms embargo on Ivory Coast and a travel ban and asset freeze against those blocking peace, violating human rights, and preventing the disarmament of combatants.
A 1999 coup, amid increasing instability following the 1993 death of Ivory Coast's three-decade post-independence leader, ended Ivory Coast's reputation for stability. Gbagbo was installed amid an uprising by his supporters the next year during an aborted vote count for the first post-coup presidential elections.
CNN's Lagos Bureau Chief Jeff Koinange contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
