French forces opened fire on loyalist crowds Tuesday outside a makeshift French military post, witnesses said. A leading hospital reported seven killed and more than 200 wounded. The French military force said it was investigating and refused to immediately comment. Dr. Sie Podipte, the emergency room chief at Cocody Hospital, said the hospital was treating more than 200 wounded in the clash and had received seven people with fatal injuries. The clash took place as thousands of loyalists massed outside the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, next to a hotel that the French have converted into a temporary evacuation center. The shootings came hours after South African President Thabo Mbeki met with Gbagbo, launching an African effort to rein in chaos that has erupted in this West African nation. Before Tuesday's shooting, an estimated 600 people had been wounded and at least 20 killed in four days of confrontations between loyalists and French troops. The U.N. Security Council, African Union, European Union and a bloc of West African leaders have all condemned Gbagbo's government in the violence, which began when Ivory Coast warplanes killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an airstrike on the rebel-held north. The violence has also shut down cocoa exports in the world's largest producer, closing ports that ship more than 40 percent of the world's raw material for chocolate, cocoa traders said Tuesday. The clashes have come at the peak of Ivory Coast's harvest, which last year was a record of 1.4 million tons. Violence has closed the country's two main ports, in Abidjan and San Pedro, since Saturday afternoon, traders and other officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. Cocoa buyers are not venturing out to buy, they said. "For the moment nothing is moving in Abidjan and the insecurity is still there so we are at home," the manager of a leading UK exporter told Reuters.