"There was no casualty from our side. No death, no injury", Lt Col Nazrul Islam, director, ISPR, told the news agency last night. He said the Bangladeshi peacekeepers are all safe.

Capt Gilles Combarieu, a UN military observer, said the Bangladeshi troops traded fire with attackers trying to enter their compound in the government-held town of Guiglo before evacuating all UN employees from the city, said an AP report from Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

"They had to defend themselves," he said, adding, 200 to 300 UN peacekeepers and staff were headed north toward a more heavily guarded buffer zone separating the government and rebel fighters.

AFP quoting a French military officer said, "There were four people killed and 12 wounded when assailants tried to occupy the Bangladeshis' camp.

"Some managed to climb aboard some armoured vehicles, which is when the UN troops opened fire with live rounds."

"I saw at least three Ivorians dead, and a fourth is probably going to die," an officer of the national army said earlier from Guiglo.

Capt Combarieu said he had no details on the number of dead or wounded. A doctor at Guiglo's main hospital said two bodies with bullet wounds lay at the morgue and there were reports of three more corpses on the roads.

The doctor, reached by telephone, spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorised to speak to reporters. His account could not be immediately verified.

A third day of street protests roiled civil war-divided Ivory Coast's government-held south as President Laurent Gbagbo's supporters blocked streets across the West African nation's main city.

Businesses shut down across Abidjan amid fears of a return to all-out violence in a country divided between government and rebel control after a 2002 through 2003 civil war.

While Gbagbo has officially banned street demonstrations, his security forces appeared to do little to disperse government supporters erecting burning barricades in streets and besieging UN offices across the cocoa-rich south.

French Army Chief of Staff Gen Henri Bentegeat yesterday called for UN sanctions against Ivory Coast on Europe-1 radio, saying for three years both sides have shown they are unwilling to resolve the conflict.

France retains economic interests in Ivory Coast, its former colony, and has peacekeepers in the country alongside a UN force.