France started to evacuate thousands of its own and other foreign nationals from the Ivory Coast today, rescuing them from rampaging mobs targeting expatriates.

Violence erupted after the Ivory Coast's air force killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in a bombing raid on the rebel-held north on Thursday.

In retaliation, France launched its own bombing raid on Saturday, wiping out most of its former colony's warplanes on the tarmac -and provoking a violent anti-French uprising of looting, burning and attacks by loyalist youths.

National television has fanned the violence and President Gbagbo’s Government, blamed by the French for the airstrike, has failed to rein in the thousands-strong crowds of loyalists. The turmoil has claimed at least 27 lives and wounded more than 900.

The first group of 240 evacuees flew out of Abidjan airport this afternoon on an Air France Boeing 777 bound for Paris. Two more flights were scheduled for later and more are expected in the coming days.

As state television aired fiery calls to action, French troops combed Ivory Coast’s largest city to find foreigners for evacuation, sending boats to rescue some expatriates from the banks of Abidjan’s lagoons.

"The Government is pushing them to kill white people - not just the French, all white people," said Marie-Noelle Mion, who was rescued by French troops in a wooden boat at daybreak and waiting with hundreds of others at Abidjan’s airport for the first flight out.

France alone expected to fly out between 4,000 to 8,000 of its citizens from across Ivory Coast, out of 14,000 French still in the former colony, in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and West Africa’s economic powerhouse, a French official said.

"It is on a voluntary basis. We are not going to evacuate all our French citizens because there are too many," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are evaluating the number of those wanting to leave and we have between 4,000 to 8,000 French who have expressed a wish to leave, whether temporarily or for good."

State media showed the bodies, one with its head blown off, of some of seven people reported killed in a clash at a French evacuation centre yesterday.

France says the seven were killed when demonstrators opened fire on the French, and Ivory Coast security forces returned fire. Demonstrators claim that it was French troops who opened fire.

"The French are assassinating our children," said one man on state TV today. "Let us all mobilise."

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