Hundreds of French citizens fled their former colony Ivory Coast on Wednesday after days of anti-French riots and looting in a country once seen as a model for Africa of post-independence prosperity.

Some 843 French nationals were flown to Paris from Abidjan, the main city in the world's top cocoa grower, after supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo chased the expatriates from their homes.

"I don't have a job any more or a house ... They took the bath, the furniture and electrical wires, everything," said Bruno Regis, at the airport with his wife and three children.

"The way it ended here, I wouldn't come back here even if they offered me a new job," said the teacher from Marseilles.

More than 2,200 French and other foreign nationals have been sheltering in French and U.N. bases in Abidjan after crowd violence exploded on Saturday.

Angry mobs went on the rampage after the French army wiped out most of the West African nation's small fleet of military aircraft in retaliation for the bombing of a French base.

The Ivorian government's medical services co-ordinator, Richard Kadio, said French soldiers had shot dead 54 people around the country and injured 1,266 between Saturday and Tuesday.

"The French reaction was too rapid, too disproportionate," Gbagbo told French television on Wednesday of the strike on the air fleet. "There was a chain of events and today the only thing I regret is that not enough time was left to make inquiries."

The Ivorian army accused French troops of behaving like an occupying force, saying on state television that they had opened fire on security forces as they deployed to secure Abidjan.

Saturday's air strike, which killed nine French peacekeepers and a U.S. aid worker, came during an offensive launched by Gbagbo's forces to dislodge rebels who seized the north of the country in 2002 after failing to topple the president.

"(Gbagbo) has to understand that you do not kill French soldiers without there being an immediate response, that you do not kill French soldiers with impunity," French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told French television.

Some 150 American, Australian, Canadian, Spanish and Portuguese nationals also left from Abidjan's sleek, modern airport on Wednesday.

Source: Agencies