Police fired tear gas to disperse a banned protest Saturday in the economic capital of the Ivory Coast by supporters of former president Laurent Gbagbo, an Agence France Presse reporter said.

Fifty young people shouting "Free Gbagbo" were pushed back while they tried to charge a barrier set up by police, who fired tear gas and caused the protesters to disperse before they reached Yopougan square, in a part of Abidjan that has long been a pro-Gbagbo stronghold.

Ivory Coast on Friday became a member of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where its former president is facing trial for alleged crimes against humanity.

Ambassador Youssoufou Bamba formally turned in paperwork to the United Nations in New York showing the country had ratified the Rome Statute, which set up the court. The moves makes it the 122nd state to become party to the statute.

An immigrant from Ivory Coast set himself on fire in Rome airport on Thursday after receiving a deportation order, sparking panic among passengers in the busy terminal, Italian media reported.

A police officer quickly put out the flames with a fire extinguisher but the man was badly burnt and has been hospitalized in a serious condition.

A French tanker that was released on Wednesday by armed pirates who seized it earlier in the week is headed to Togo's capital Lome, a port official in the west African nation told Agence France Presse.

A spokesman for Sea Tankers, owner of the vessel that was hijacked off Ivory Coast, had earlier confirmed the release and said that two of the 17 sailors on board reported light injuries when the ship was freed.

A French tanker has been hijacked off Ivory Coast, port authority officials in the economic capital Abidjan confirmed Monday, after a report that the vessel had been seized by pirates.

"The boat was hijacked in international waters," Alexis Guie, in charge of communication at the port, told Agence France Presse. The International Maritime Bureau earlier said that a French tanker disappeared at the weekend off the west African country, apparently in an act of piracy.

The International Maritime Bureau said on Monday that a French-owned oil tanker that went missing off the Ivory Coast over the weekend is believed to have been hijacked by pirates.

The owners of the Luxembourg-flagged tanker with 17 crew on board lost communication with the ship on Sunday, Noel Choong, head of the bureau's Kuala Lumpur-based piracy reporting center told Agence France Presse.

West African leaders Saturday called for greater international involvement in Mali as they met to speed up the deployment of regional troops to boost a French-backed offensive to halt an Islamist onslaught.

The emergency summit in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan was also attended by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who clearly said it was time for the Africans to take over and "as soon as possible", adding that this was "the aim of our meeting."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he would attend an emergency summit of the west African bloc ECOWAS on Saturday to help accelerate the deployment of an African military force in Mali.

"I will go there with a military attache and we will see with our African friends how we can speed up the deployment of MISMA (the International Mission for Mali Assistance)," he told AFP.

At least 60 people died and dozens more were injured in Abidjan as crowds stampeded overnight during celebratory New Year's fireworks, Ivory Coast rescue workers said Tuesday.

The head of military rescue workers, Lieutenant Colonel Issa Sako, told public television that "60 people" died and 200 were injured based on a preliminary toll. Another rescue official told Agence France Presse the toll was "61 dead and 48 injured".

The authorities in Ivory Coast have resorted to torture and arbitrary detentions in recent months following a wave of attacks against government targets, a senior U.N. official said here Saturday.

"It's beyond any doubt that there were cases of arbitrary detention, that there were cases of keeping people incommunicado, as well as some people were victims of torture," U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic told reporters.