American Kids Escape Ivory Coast
American teens, young children and teachers rescued from a pinned-down mission school took off from Ivory Coast on Thursday in a U.S. C-130 cargo plane under military guard, the first U.S. evacuees in the West African country's bloody uprising.
Meanwhile, rebel soldiers said Thursday they had agreed to a 48-hour ceasefire to allow French troops to evacuate other foreigners trapped by an army uprising in the second city of Bouake.
"This ceasefire is just to allow the evacuation. We have agreed this with the French, not with the enemies," a rebel spokesman said.
About 20 Americans boarded the U.S. military plane at Yamoussoukro, the capital of Ivory Coast, and staging point for their evacuation from the rebel-held city of Bouake by French troops.
U.S. soldiers carrying assault rifles flanked the plane. One evacuee, a man, shook hands with soldiers before boarding the plane.
French troops on Wednesday evacuated 191 Westerners at the International Christian Academy in Bouake — 148 Americans, including 98 children, and 43 others, including French and Canadians.
Some of the children were waving American flags and shouting, "Vive la France," or "Long live France," after a week pinned down by sporadic gunfire around the grounds of the school on the eastern edge of Bouake, the West African nation's second city.
U.S. officials said plans were still being made for some of the other evacuated Westerners.
The 20 aboard the plane were bound for Accra, capital of neighboring Ghana. U.S. officials said they would screen them, oversee their reunion with their families, and facilitate flights back to the United States for those who chose to go.
Many of the children are sons and daughters of American missionaries based in Ivory Coast and elsewhere in Africa.
A half-million locals in Bouake, with far less hope of rescue, remained trapped without water or power in their homes, in the face of a possible government offensive to retake the city.
"Everyone is afraid," said one frightened Ivorian woman, reached by telephone Thursday. "We'd like to be helped too."
President Laurent Gbagbo has promised a full-scale war to root out the rebels who now hold two cities, throwing Ivory Coast into its worst crisis since a 1999 coup. The loyalist military says only concern for civilian lives has stalled its retaking of Bouake.
The uprising began with a failed coup attempt last Thursday by a core group of 750-800 former soldiers angry over their dismissal from the army for suspected disloyalty. At least 270 people died in the first days of the uprising, but no Westerners have been reported killed.
On Thursday, French soldiers with jeeps and a light tank were installed at the International Christian Academy from which they had evacuated 98 children and 93 teachers and staff — 148 were Americans and the rest included French and Canadians.
More troops were stationed on the south side of the city, which has been in rebel hands since a failed coup attempt Sept. 19. "We are ready to intervene at any moment," French Lt. Col. Ange-Antoine Leccia said by telephone from Bouake.
With French troops' entry, the city was calm overnight and there were no immediate plans to evacuate the hundreds of American, French and other European nationals still holed up there.
The French army was assessing Westerners' security and living conditions in Bouake, Leccia said.
About 20,000 French and thousands of other Westerners live in Ivory Coast, the economic power house of former French West Africa. The total number of Americans in the once-stable nation is in the low thousands.
Around 200 U.S. soldiers, mostly special forces, touched down in Yamoussoukro's airport in C-130s Wednesday on a mission to safeguard Americans.
Britain also sent a handful of soldiers to the country to work with embassy staff on plans to evacuate its 11 nationals from Bouake if necessary.
"Everybody wants out, and they are looking forward to getting to Abidjan safely," said a senior British embassy official in Yamoussoukro.
In Yamossoukro Thursday, about 20 American teens, young children and teachers rescued from the Bouake mission took off for neighboring Ghana in a U.S. C-130 cargo plane under military guard, the first U.S. evacuees amid the week-old uprising.
Others waited for their next move at a weed-overgrown church compound, a U.S. humvee parked nearby, and soldiers escorting teens in baseball caps and T-shirts as they moved about the campus.
"They're fine. No one is hurt," school security officer Mike Coustineau told The Associated Press at Yamoussoukro.
"We were hunkered down for seven days waiting for help — then the French came in at 10 o'clock yesterday," Coustineau said. "We were very delighted to see them."
Rebels still control Bouake, in the center of the country, and the northern city of Korhogo. In both cities, residents are hunkering down in their homes, shops are shut and the prices of food and fuel have skyrocketed.
In Korhogo, an opposition stronghold, rebels cruised the streets in commandeered vehicles overnight, firing into the air.
The insurgents have found a degree of support in Ivory Coast's north, whose people complain of being treated as second-class citizens by the southern-based government. Northerners are predominantly Muslim, and of different ethnic groups than the largely Christian southerners.
Unrest since the once-stable country's first-ever coup in 1999 has unleashed ethnic, regional, political and religious hostilities, sparking violence that has killed hundreds.
Also vulnerable in the conflict are the hundreds of thousands of guest workers from neighboring Muslim countries.