FRANCE was on the brink of war with one of its former African colonies last night after planes belonging to the Ivory Coast government bombed peacekeepers in the rebel-held north, killing nine French troops and an American aid worker and wounding 23 French soldiers.

In the gravest confrontation between France and its war-torn former colony, French forces hit back by destroying virtually the entire air force of the Ivory Coast, including the two offending Sukhoi fighter jets and five helicopters.

The United Nations security council met in emergency session and demanded an immediate halt to all military action. France gave a warning that it held President Laurent Gbagbo personally responsible for maintaining calm in his country.

Retaliation for the bombing came swiftly. France said the Ivory Coast jets were destroyed on the runway of an airport in the capital Yamoussoukro.

President Jacques Chirac also ordered the destruction of five Soviet-built attack helicopters, leaving the Ivorian air force with just one helicopter.

“Our forces responded in a situation of legitimate defence,” Jean-François Bureau, spokesman of the French defence ministry, said.

In Abidjan, the commercial capital and government stronghold, French troops fired into the air to fend off angry loyalist mobs who were trying to storm their base. French soldiers later drove pro-government troops out of the airport.

Thousands of government supporters took to the city’s streets armed with machetes, axes and sticks, rampaging through French homes. Smoke rose from a French school set on fire by the mob.

As France dispatched three Mirage jets and 300 additional troops to west Africa, the confrontation threatened to escalate the Ivory Coast’s long- running civil war, reignited last week after a ceasefire that had held for more than a year.

About 4,000 French peacekeepers and 6,000 UN forces were sent to the Ivory Coast two months ago to maintain the truce between the rebel north and the loyalist south.

While French forces have often protected the government from the rebels, the French are widely resented in the fiercely nationalistic south where they are suspected of siding with the insurgents.

The civil war, triggered by a failed coup two years ago, erupted again on Thursday when government planes bombed rebel-held towns. Yesterday the jets that took part in those attacks returned to bomb a French position at the town of Brobo, outside the rebel stronghold of Boauke.

An Ivory Coast spokesman described the attack on the French troops as a “mistake”, although he refused to acknowledge that government forces were to blame. The Ivorians said three of their soldiers were injured in yesterday’s clashes. All the pilots were able to bale out safely.

The Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest producer of cocoa, had been the pride of France’s former colonial empire for decades after independence in 1960. But a downturn in commodity prices and political change in the 1990s brought instability and the country suffered its first military coup in 1999.

Turmoil, as well as regional, ethnic and political hatreds, have reigned ever since.

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