Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Nov. 7 (Agencies): Machete-waving mobs thousands strong looted and burned in Ivory Coast?s largest cities today, laying siege to a French military base and searching house to house for French families after a day of ground and air clashes between forces of France and its former colony.

?We are all terrified, and try to reassure each other,? one French resident said by telephone from his home elsewhere in the city. ?We have been told by the embassy to stay at home...It is a difficult situation to live through,? he said.

Ivory Coast ? its air force destroyed and its airports taken by the French in retaliation for a deadly Ivory Coast airstrike on a French peacekeeping position ? reluctantly said today it was willing to cease fire, and that it was pulling back troops.

Ivory Coast will ask the UN Security Council for action against France, presidential spokesman Desire Tagro declared on state television, adding: ?We are faced with aggression by one country against another country. We are going to inform the entire world ... that France has come to attack us.?

France?s punishing military strikes came in retaliation for the Ivory Coast air force?s surprise bombing yesterday of a French peacekeeping position in the country?s north, held by Ivory Coast rebels since civil war broke out in September 2002 in the world?s top cocoa producer.

Yesterday?s airstrike killed nine French troops and an American consultant working for an aid group.

A Red Cross official, Kim Gordon-Bates, said about 150 people had been wounded in Abidjan, most from bullets. The official refused to give any information on deaths.

About 250 French troop reinforcements landed today at Abidjan?s international airport, which was taken by France late yesterday after it destroyed what it said was the entire Ivory Coast air force ? five helicopter gunships and the two Russian-made Sukhoi warplanes used in the airstrike on the French.

The French reinforcements flew from the west African nation of Gabon, where France was holding three newly scrambled Mirage fighter jets on standby. Still more reinforcements headed toward Abidjan this afternoon from the capital, Yamoussoukro. An Associated Press photographer saw 20 heavy vehicles bearing French troops heading toward Abidjan ? a city in flames.

A French military helicopter swept in this afternoon to rescue trapped civilians, apparently expatriates, from an Abidjan hotel, airlifting about a dozen to safety with their suitcases.

South African President Thabo Mbeki will work urgently to try and mediate a political solution to fresh fighting in Ivory Coast after being given the mission by the African Union (AU), the group said today.

It was not immediately clear what else Mbeki?s intervention would involve or whether he would visit Ivory Coast.