France has evacuated hundreds more citizens fleeing violence in Ivory Coast as opposition leaders from its former colony gather in South Africa for talks aimed at rebuilding peace.
African leaders fear a full-scale war in the world's top cocoa grower would again destabilise a region which includes fragile postwar states such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.
About 800 French nationals and other foreigners flew out on Thursday on two planes after days of anti-French attacks in the West African country, split between a government-run south and a rebel-held north since a failed coup in 2002.
A French military spokesman said some victims of the violence had been raped. French people said the unrest had been the worst of several waves targeting them in the past two years.
"We'll never look at this place the same way again. There will always be that scar," said Frenchman Stephane Mira, leaving the main city Abidjan with his wife and 13-year-old son.
"What scares me the most is that a civil war like the one in Rwanda could explode," said Mira, 40, a sales manager for the Goodyear tyre company who has been in Ivory Coast for 20 years.
"That's where it's heading."
Supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo began looting and burning foreigners' homes and companies in Abidjan on Saturday after Paris wiped out Ivory Coast's air force.
France struck after an Ivorian warplane bombed a French peacekeeping base, killing nine French soldiers and a U.S. aid worker, during an offensive on rebel territory that shattered an 18-month ceasefire.
Abidjan seemed to be moving towards normality on Thursday, with some shops reopening and orange taxis back on the streets.
Trucks carrying cocoa beans unloaded at the country's two main ports as leading exporters started to reopen.