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U.S. kids rescued in Ivory Coast
( 2002-09-26 09:18 ) (7 )

French troops secured a school in a rebel-held Ivory Coast city on Wednesday, evacuating some 100 American children and others trapped amid the West African nation's deadliest-ever uprising. The mission came as U.S. troops, deployed to protect or evacuate Americans, arrived Wednesday in the capital, Yamossoukro, and in neighboring Ghana.

THE CHILDREN and others left on vehicles heading east from the central city of Bouake, some carrying U.S. flags.

"Everybody is out, everybody is safe and healthy. We are very relieved,” said Evan Evans from Florida, a dormitory administrator at the International Christian Academy.

The French soldiers arrived at the school on the outskirts of Bouake, with no reports of clashes with the rebels who have controlled the city since their failed coup last Thursday.

The children - ranging in age from 5 to 18 - and staff had been pinned down on the campus since the coup attempt. Missionaries stepped up their appeals for help when rebels breached the campus and fired from the grounds during skirmishes Monday night with government troops who are moving in on the city, vowing to retake it.

Firing broke out again on both sides of the school around daybreak Wednesday before the French arrival, Gilliland said. “Nobody was firing at them, but there was gunfire all around,” he said.

U.S. TROOPS STANDING BY

Meanwhile, two planes carrying U.S. troops arrived in Yamossoukro Wednesday, airport sources said.

U.S. Embassy officials did not comment on the arrival, but a spokesman for the U.S. European Command said forces were now inside the West African country.

"At the request of the U.S. ambassador in the Ivory Coast, we have moved elements of Special Operations Command Europe into the Ivory Coast. They are there for the safety of U.S. citizens,” the spokesman said.

U.S. troops also landed Wednesday in neighboring Ghana.

Nearly 200 American troops, three C-130 cargo planes and one other plane, and equipment were being deployed there, Ghanaian Foreign Ministry officials said. The Accra airport was expected to be used as a staging area for any U.S. rescue missions.

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that for now Americans in Ivory Coast were not in danger. “At the moment, things are at an acceptable level,” he told reporters at a NATO meeting in Warsaw, Poland. “At the moment we see no threat to a small element of Americans. It’s not a serious problem.”

Rebel soldiers riding commandeered vehicles could be seen Wednesday cruising the streets of Bouake, one of two cities they have held since their failed coup Thursday, residents said by telephone. The day before, heavy firing broke out in the city, Ivory Coast’s second largest, where the boarding school for American and other children is located.

PRESIDENT PROMISES ACTION

President Laurent Gbagbo has promised a full-scale battle to force the rebels out of Bouake, home to a half million people, and the other rebel-held city, Korhogo, a northern opposition stronghold. Military leaders say only concern for civilians has stalled the assault. At least 270 people died in the uprising’s first days.

In Korhogo, rebels armed with guns and rocket launchers went house to house, rounding up any paramilitary police and soldiers and confiscating their weapons.

Government forces have been moving on Bouake, 220 miles north of the commercial capital, Abidjan, though the city was quiet overnight after heavy exchanges of gun and artillery fire Tuesday afternoon.

There were contradictory reports about the fighting. Rebels claimed to have repelled an assault by loyalist troops on an officer’s training college. The government army claimed to be on the streets of Bouake.

AMERICANS STAY, FOR NOW

No general evacuation of Americans is planned, the State Department said Tuesday.

"Forces have arrived in the region to be in a closer position to provide for the safety and security of the American citizens in the Ivory Coast in wake of the recent civil unrest,” Maj. Bill Bigelow, a spokesman for U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said.

An American expeditionary force and British troops already were on the ground in Ivory Coast, Ghanaian and French military and government officials said. Britain sent eight soldiers to Ivory Coast to work with embassy officials on plans to evacuate British nationalists if necessary, the Ministry of Defense said from London.

The uprising - led by a core group of 750-800 ex-soldiers angry over their dismissal from the army for suspected disloyalty - poses Ivory Coast’s worst crisis since its first-ever coup in 1999.

Ivory Coast had been West Africa’s anchor of stability and prosperity until a 1990s economic downturn, followed by the shattering 1999 coup.

About 20,000 French and thousands of other Westerners made their homes there. None are yet known to have been hurt in the five days of fighting.

IMMIGRANTS TARGETED

Far more exposed are immigrants from neighboring Muslim countries, many of whom have already been attacked, arrested or seen their homes burned by paramilitary police, as the uprising sparks deadly rivalries between the mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.

The government has repeatedly accused the country’s northern, Muslim-based opposition and unspecified foreign countries - widely assumed to include predominantly Muslim Burkina Faso - of fomenting the unrest that has overtaken the country since the 1999 military takeover.

The accusations have sparked clashes between opposition backers and the government’s predominantly southern, Christian following.

The ex-soldiers behind the latest coup attempt are believed linked to Gen. Robert Guei, the former junta leader who took power in 1999, and is accused by the current civilian government of organizing the latest attempt.

But the soldiers have also won recruits from northern Muslims hostile to Gbagbo’s government, taking refuge in cities dominated by northern, Muslim tribes.

Guei himself was killed by loyalist paramilitaries in the uprising’s first hours. His family and aides have denied his involvement, as have some rebels.