A group of youths in the dusty town of Korhogo, a rebel stronghold close to the border with Burkina Faso, said their priority was television.

"We are now back to civilization because without electricity we couldn't watch TV," said one of them, his eyes glued to scenes of the preparations for the funeral of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before switching to news of the latest events in Ivory Coast.

The curfew which rebels put on place last week after the beginning of air attacks by government aircraft was also lifted for three nights beginning Friday in several towns to allow the celebrations at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Government planes began last Thursday raining down bombs on Korhogo and the central rebel stronghold of Bouake, in three days of strikes which also hit a French military base, killing nine French troops and a US aid worker.

President Laurent Gbagbo has said the strikes were part of an operation to "liberate and reunify" the country split between the rebel north and government south since a failed September 2002 coup bid sparked civil war.

But the strikes have been widely condemned by the international community as a violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire.

A spokesman for the Gbagbo government justified the cuts as coming at the behest of the state-run electricity and water companies, which have not been paid for their services since the rebellion.

It was only because the president intervened personally, he added, that the utilities were restored.

Gbagbo has come under pressure from UN and other humanitarian agencies to turn the lights back on, who feared an outbreak of disease such as cholera as fresh water supplies dwindled.

No cases of cholera have been reported, according to Antoine Foucher, Ivory Coast director of the French aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, MSF).

"We avoided a real problem in the north, fortunately," he told AFP by telephone from Abidjan.

"Now the hospitals can get back up and running."

Korhogo's hospital, the most modern in the north, suffered greatly under the power cuts, losing four patients.

For lack of power and refrigeration, bodies that piled up in the morgues in both Korhogo and Bouake had to be summarily disposed of rather than properly treated for burial.

From Ouangolodougou to Ferkessedougou in the north down to Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city, there were hoots of joy when the lights finally went back on, neighborhood by neighborhood.

"Eighty percent of the town has had its power restored," said Alassane Fall, a regional coordinator for the United Nations operation in Ivory Coast based in Bouake.

"For water it will probably take another 10 hours or so, and we just have to wait for the batteries to charge for the phones to start working."

A group of friends clustered at a bar in western Korhogo clinked their glasses to toast their "victory," ignoring the fact that the beer that sloshed down their throats was lukewarm.

"It doesn't matter, we will have cold drinks tomorrow," said Karim. "Tonight we toast victory because Abidjan wanted to suffocate the north, considering all of us civilians to be rebels, and it didn't work."

The political arm of Ivory Coast's rebel New Forces has given the go-ahead for a march from the central town of Bouake to Abidjan, following a rally that sent thousands of people into the streets to demand reconciliation of the divided country.

Organizers expect the marchers, due to set off on Monday, will take at least two weeks to make the 300-kilometer (180-mile) trek to the coastal capital.

Whether the marchers will be allowed to cross the buffer zone patrolled by some 10,000 French and UN peacekeepers that divides the rebel north from the government-controlled south, is unknown.