US Troops Sent to Safeguard Children

By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS

Associated Press Writer

September 25, 2002, 12:09 AM EDT

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- U.S. troops landed in West Africa on Wednesday to safeguard 100 American school children holed up in a rebel-held city after the bloodiest-ever uprising in the Ivory Coast. Frightened residents reported heavy artillery and gunfire.

The first of what were expected to be four U.S. military planes arrived before dawn at the international airport in the capital of neighboring Ghana, authorities at Accra's Kotoka International Airport said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Washington announced Tuesday it was sending U.S. forces to the region, ready for any possible rescue of Americans pinned down in the violent aftermath of a coup attempt in Ivory Coast last week.

Just under 200 American troops, three C-130 cargo planes and one other plane, and equipment were expected, with Ghana to the east to be used as a staging area.

French troops moved closer to the central city of Bouake as well, ready to rescue their nationals and other Westerners if it appears they could be caught in a cross fire between government troops and renegade forces who launched the coup attempt Thursday.

With government forces also moving in on Bouake, firing erupted in the city Monday night and Tuesday afternoon. Overnight, rebels breached the walls of the mission school and fired from its grounds, prompting appeals from the missionaries for help.

"A very welcome development," said a relieved James Forlines, director of Free Will Baptist Foreign Missions, a Nashville, Tenn.-based church group, after Washington announced its deployment.

"It has been a very trying day. It has been a very trying five days," mission official Neil Gilliland said, speaking by telephone from the United States.

The scrambling to safeguard Westerners in the Ivory Coast came amid clashes and growing tensions after the failed coup, which has left rebels holding just two cities. At least 270 people have died so far.

The uprising -- with 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.

No general evacuation of Americans was planned, the State Department said. It issued a travel warning for Americans and urged those in Abidjan, Bouake and Korhogo to remain close to home, to observe government curfew restrictions and to remain in close communication with the American Embassy.

An American expeditionary force and British troops already were on the ground in Ivory Coast, Ghanaian and French military and government officials said.

"There's fighting going on now in the area near where this school is located. That's what our concern is," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher explained in Washington about the children and staff of Bouake's International Christian Academy.

Tensions were "understandably high" at the school, Boucher added, but all students and staff are believed safe.

One hundred French troops moved up from their own staging area at Ivory Coast's capital, Yamoussoukro, where helicopters and trucks were standing by to ferry out foreigners.

"We want to get closer so that if the belligerents -- whoever they are -- attack our nationals, we can intervene very quickly," said French army Col. Charles de Kersabiec. France is Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler.

A new convoy of French reinforcements rumbled into the capital after dark, at least a dozen in number.

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has pledged full-scale battle to rout the rebels from two cities taken and held since the uprising: Bouake, and Korhogo, a northern opposition stronghold. Military leaders say only concern for civilians has stalled the assault.

Tense residents in Bouake reported an hour of heavy-gun and artillery fire Tuesday afternoon.

The Ivory Coast army claimed already to be on the streets of the city. A journalist reached by telephone in the besieged city said he saw what he believed to be loyalist troops wearing government badges speeding through the town in military vehicles.

The night before, heavy gunfire rang out across the city, 220 miles north of the commercial capital, Abidjan.

Rebels climbed the walls of the boarding school for missionary children, home to about 200 foreigners, most of them Americans, church officials say.

"It really was a cross fire, not shooting at the children but a whole lot of ammo going, scaring the kids to death," said Forlines, whose mission has ties to Bouake's International Christian Academy.

In Korhogo, rebels firing automatic weapons into the air began ordering people out of the town center and back into their houses, a resident said by phone. No loyalist soldiers had been seen in the town, the resident added.

A lagoon-side city of high rises and multi-lane highways, the commercial capital, Abidjan, had been the region's anchor of stability and prosperity until a 1990s economic downturn, followed by the shattering 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.

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.

A key opposition leader with a strong northern Muslim following, hiding out in a foreign embassy, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that security forces tried to kill him on the day of the coup attempt.

"It's clear they are using this situation to try to liquidate and eliminate people in my party," Alassane Dramane Ouattara told the Associated Press by telephone from the French Embassy, where he fled during the uprising.

Ouattara's supporters have clashed frequently with Gbagbo's mostly southern Christian backers since the country's 1999 coup.

The ex-soldiers behind the latest coup attempt are believed linked to Gen. Robert Guei, the former junta leader who took power in the 1999 coup. Guei was killed in the uprising's first hours.

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2002