ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – Security forces fired on armed attackers Tuesday as thousands of angry government loyalists massed outside a French evacuation post for foreigners, reportedly killing seven people and wounding 200 in violence pitting France against its former prize colony.

Denying any responsibility, France’s military said loyalist demonstrators opened fire as a French convoy left the post, and Ivorian security forces returned fire.

The bloodletting erupted at a one-time luxury hotel French forces have commandeered as an evacuation center for 1,300 French and other foreigners rescued from rampages across the commercial capital, Abidjan.

A photographer saw the bodies of three demonstrators outside a hospital, their bodies draped in Ivorian flags.

The chaos in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and West Africa’s former economic powerhouse, broke out Saturday when Ivory Coast warplanes killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an airstrike on the rebel-held north.

France wiped out the nation’s air force on the tarmac in retaliation, sparking anti-French rampages by thousands in the fiercely nationalist south.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday gave wide support to a resolution that would impose sanctions against Ivory Coast if the country’s government and rebels don’t return to a peace process by the beginning of December, diplomats said.

“It’s much more effective if you hold a gun to their head, rather than pull the trigger,” Pakistan’s U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram said.

The French set up their evacuation center Monday a few hundred yards from the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, and the site has become a flashpoint for violence.

Associated Press

Pro-government demonstrators protest Tuesday outside a French evacuation center in the Ivory Coast capital of Abidjan.