FRENCH troops killed at least 10 Central African Republic army mutineers yesterday in helicopter led reprisal raids after the killing of two French officers on a multinational mediation mission.
The French Defence Ministry in Paris accused mutineers of shooting the two unarmed officers in cold blood on Saturday and said the raids, which also used tanks and armoured personnel carriers, were in self defence.
Witnesses said French helicopter gunships fired on the mutineers' command posts in Kassai army camp and other areas of the capital, Bangui, under their control in the operation that began in the middle of the night.
A French defence ministry spokesman said 10 mutineers were killed and 30 were taken prisoner.
Spokesmen for the mutineers put the death toll among their ranks at 21 and said 11 civilians had also been killed around their headquarters in the populous southern district of Petevo.
Calm returned to the city later in the day but residents reported an exodus of civilians from rebel areas.
"The aim of this French operation was solely an act of self defence against two particularly cowardly murders," a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Paris.
A French military spokesman in Bangui said French troops had wrested control from the mutineers of the port and its fuel supplies and a short wave radio transmitter.
The Central African Republic is in the grip of its third army revolt within a year. French troops, in the former colony under a defence pact, intervened to keep President Ange Felix Patasse in power during the second revolt in May.
Hundreds of people have been killed in violence associated with the revolts that were initially about pay but have turned into a campaign to oust Mr Patasse, a civilian elected in 1993 during the impoverished nation's democratic transition.