Some 8,000 UN peacekeepers are trying to keep a lid on the tensionAn office of Ivory Coast opposition leader Alassane Ouattara has been attacked in the main city Abidjan, with unconfirmed reports of several dead.
The violence broke out despite a night-time curfew, as a deadline passed to release the results of Sunday's presidential election run-off.
Supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo are preventing the results from being declared, saying there was fraud in the north, where Mr Ouattara is popular.
The election is the first for a decade.
It is intended to reunify the country, the world's largest cocoa producer, divided since a 2002 civil war. Former rebels still control the north.
The BBC's Valerie Bony at the attacked party office in the Yopougon district in the west of Abidjan - seen as a pro-Gbagbo area - says she can see a lot of blood there.
The building was reportedly targeted by a group of armed men at 2300 local time (and GMT) on Wednesday night - just an hour before the deadline to release the election results.
"The gendarmes came and opened fire for a good while, killing four people and injuring over a dozen," said Issouf Diomande, a representative of Ouattara's RDR party, reports the Reuters news agency.
There has been no independent confirmation that gendarmes were behind the attack.
Both the army and UN peacekeepers have been patrolling Abidjan's streets since Sunday to prevent an outbreak of violence.
By: BBC News
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