A 300-strong contingent of Bangladeshi UN troops was forced to withdraw after an attack on their base at Guiglo, 300 miles west of Abidjan, the commercial capital. At least four people died when the peacekeepers opened fire to defend themselves.

Another contingent of 70 international peacekeepers was evacuated from the town of Douéké. Peacekeepers at the UN headquarters in Abidjan fired in the air and used teargas to keep the thugs at bay. Businesses across the city closed as Mr Gbagbo’s supporters blocked roads with burning tyres and stopped vehicles.

President Obasanjo of Nigeria will fly to Ivory Coast today to try to defuse the troubles. The UN and France, the former colonial power, called for calm.

Late last night Mr Gbagbo responded by calling on his supporters to end the protests and return to work.

The rebels, who control the northern half of the country, had given warning of renewed war if Mr Gbagbo reneges on a UN-brokered peace agreement negotiated last year. They have been fighting for real powersharing with the southern elite and equal distribution of the country’s wealth.

The violence erupted on Monday when international mediators demanded that the mandate of the country’s parliament, a rubber-stamp body packed with Mr Gbagbo’s supporters, be wound up pending elections.

The ruling party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), said that it was quitting immediately the transitional Government and the UN-backed peace process.

“If the FPI succeeds in making a putsch against the peace process, that means war,” Sidiki Konate, a spokesman for the northern New Forces rebel movement, said. Mr Gbagbo unleashed the ruling party’s Young Patriots, a favourite tactic of a man who has clung to power since the end of the 2002-03 civil war divided his country, and who has resisted all attempts to persuade him to share power.

Gangs of Young Patriots have spread out across Abidjan and other main population centres controlled by government forces. The few foreigners left in Abidjan, once the jewel in France’s colonial crown, are hiding in the basements of their houses or in the homes and offices of Ivorian friends.

The last time that machete-wielding gangs hit the streets, they beat and raped any white foreigners they found.

“There are virtually no whites left. The only foreigners left in Abidjan who are not in the well-protected UN compounds are Lebanese who are busy picking up what business the expatriates left behind,” a regional analyst said.

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