Yury Sushkin, the suspected pilot of the Ivorian airforce jet behind the strike and two suspected co-pilots, Patrice Ouei and Ange Gnanduillet, were tried for murder in absentia, their whereabouts being unknown.

The November 6, 2004 attack on French peacekeeping forces in the central region of Bouake caused a deep rift in relations between France and its former West African colony.

Two planes flew low over the site and one then fired rockets into the camp, killing nine soldiers and an American aid worker.

Forty others were injured.

The strike came during an aerial offensive by then Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo to try to reclaim the country's north from the rebels who had controlled it since 2002.

France reacted furiously to the November 6 strike, wiping out Ivory Coast's entire fleet of military aircraft and dealing a severe blow to Gbagbo's bid to end the rebellion.

Relations between France and Ivory Coast, which had already been fraught, quickly deteriorated.

Violent anti-France protests broke out across the nationalist south, prompting France to airlift thousands of its nationals to safety.

Officials close to Gbagbo, who was eventually toppled by his French-backed rival in 2011 after a disputed election, claimed the pilot mistook the French camp for rebel positions.

But some suspect it was a deliberate hit, aimed at clearing a path for Gbagbo's forces to storm rebel-held territory, or even that France itself masterminded the attack on its own forces to have a pretext to try chase Gbagbo from power.