ImmigThousands are fleeing the Ivory Coast as soldiers torched yet more shanty towns following an uprising by dissident soldiers.
President Laurent Gbagbo said his loyalists were hunting down remaining dissidents in Abidjan, again under government control after Thursday's attacks by dissidents who still hold the second city of Bouake and Korhogo in the far north.
Paramilitary gendarmes torched shanty houses near Abidjan's plush Deux-Plateaux district, riffling through the pockets of residents before sending them off carrying on their heads what possessions they could salvage before the flames took hold.
"They burnt the houses without even warning us - they took any money, any mobile phones they could find," said Kone Moussa, originally from the northern town of Boundiali.
"We cannot go home to the north because of the situation there. We do not know where to go."
Shortly after arriving back in Abidjan late on Friday, Gbagbo told the nation: "We will systematically hunt down all those who are hiding in the so-called makeshift districts."
But residents said they had seen nothing to suggest dissidents were hiding in the shanty towns.
"They say that the people who launched the attack came from the shanty towns, so they are burning them. It's very, very bad," said Jislain Gbomene, a pensioner who lives nearby.
Witnesses across town said homes and market stalls were ablaze in the populous districts of Adjame and Abobo, home to large numbers of immigrants.
Gendarmes seen forcing people from their homes at gunpoint prevented journalists from taking photos and declined to say why they were burning houses.
The tense atmosphere brought back memories of ethnic violence that left hundreds dead following elections in 2000 from which northern Muslim opposition leader Alassane Ouattara was barred because of doubts over his Ivorian nationality.
His critics say he hails from Burkina Faso, like over two million of the country's 16 million inhabitants. Immigrants from Burkina Faso and Mali form the backbone of the labour force for the cocoa industry in Ivory Coast, the world's top grower.
Clutches of people poured across the wide boulevards and autoroute bisecting Deux Plateaux, stacking what furniture they had managed to save in the central reservation.