Hundreds of Ivory Coast soldiers protested on Tuesday over a pay dispute, storming a television station in the West African nation's second-largest city and blocking traffic in Abidjan.

The protests underlined the fragile state of the military in the world's largest cocoa exporter three years after the end of a long crisis that had split the country in two.

The demonstrations also occurred with less than a year to go before presidential elections in October 2015.

Waves of protests began in the second-largest city of Bouake before extending to the economic capital Abidjan; Ferkessedougou and Khorogo in the north; and Bondoukou and Abengourou in the east.

Soldiers are demanding bonuses owed to them under a 2007 peace deal.

The soldiers who took over the state TV and radio station in Bouake were unarmed and said they wanted to broadcast a message related to their demands, a journalist who works for the station told AFP.

Earlier in Bouake, an AFP journalist saw soldiers erecting barricades. Dozens of soldiers, unarmed and some with their faces covered with masks or white paint, were involved in the protest there.

Stores closed in the city, but residents continued to walk about freely.

"They came to take the regional station of RTI (Ivorian Radio Television) in Bouake," the journalist said, adding that the soldiers later asked all employees to leave the site.

"Since they were not happy with what their minister said, they wanted to respond to him."

The station does not have the capacity to broadcast live, so the soldiers recorded a message that they wanted to see aired.

About 50 of them, wearing uniforms, later remained outside the building before leaving. The station was not ransacked.

"The military is not occupying the site," Affoussy Bamba, a government spokeswoman, said later.

Ivory Coast's defence minister ordered soldiers to return to their posts after they held up traffic in the main city Abidjan.

The defence minister, Paul Koffi Koffi, went on state television to tell the soldiers to call off the protest immediately. He also announced a series of measures aimed at calming the situation, including the payment of arrears.

Soldiers told AFP they fired in the air in protest in Bondoukou and Abengourou in the country's east.

In Abidjan, soldiers and firefighters held up traffic in the central Plateau district, where several ministries as well as the presidential palace are located.

"We are demonstrating to reclaim our dues. We will paralyse the main towns in the interior. If our demands are not fulfilled, we will attack banks on the third day," an officer based in Abidjan said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bouake served as the rebel capital after civil conflict cut the country in half between 2002-2011. The rebels who controlled the country's north backed current President Alassane Ouattara, while the south supported former head of state Laurent Gbagbo.

The 2007 peace deal mentioned by the soldiers in their demands aimed at reunifying the country.

In November 2010, Ouattara won a long-postponed presidential election, but the outcome of the poll was violently disputed by followers of the incumbent Gbagbo, at the cost of some 3,000 more lives until Gbagbo was arrested in April 2011.

Security sources alleged former rebels integrated into the military in 2009 were at the origin of the protests on Tuesday before they later spread.

There have been tensions between former rebels integrated into the military and long-serving soldiers who see them as indisciplined and incompetent.

The veteran president of neighbouring Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, was ousted in a popular revolt three weeks ago when he tried to extend his 27-year rule.