Paris - About 80 supporters of former prime minister Mr Alassane Ouattara occupied the Ivory Coast embassy in Paris and set some rooms on fire before police expelled them, a police spokesman said.
About 20 protesters were detained after the hour-long protest, in which demonstrators also overturned five cars parked in the embassy parking lot, he said. Six people were taken to hospital with light cases of smoke inhalation.
The demonstrators said they were protesting against an Ivory Coast Supreme Court decision to exclude Mr Ouattara from the country's presidential election on October 22nd. "No to a military regime in Ivory Coast," a leader of Mr Ouattara's RDR party in France, Mr Gododua Gnizako, said in a statement he made in front of the embassy. "We demand the return of all the candidates to the presidential election and the release of all political prisoners."