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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (46948)	9/25/2002 3:25:32 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

American kids out of Ivory Coast School.... By CLAR NI CHONGHAILE .c The Associated Press YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast (Sept. 25) - American schoolchildren waving U.S. flags evacuated a rebel-held city under French military escort Wednesday, as U.S. special forces landed in this West African nation to help rescue Westerners caught in its deadliest uprising. The convoy of 10 to 12 cars left rebel-held Bouake bound for Yamoussoukro, 40 miles to the south, where U.S. special forces in C-130s arrived hours earlier to receive them. The children swung American flags out windows of the cars as the convoy headed to safety down the region's main road, after a new night of sporadic gunfire outside the International Christian Academy. Many of the children wore T-shirts sporting American flags. Some of the youngsters leaned out the windows to yell ''Vive la France!'' at another French convoy headed the other way, into Bouake. About 100 American children ages 5 to 18 attend the mission boarding school in Bouake, intended for sons and daughters of missionaries based across Africa. Another 60 children also attend the school, which has a staff of 40, most of whom are American. About 100 well-armed French troops had moved into the whitewashed compound early Wednesday, securing the school after rebel forces breached the walls two days earlier to fire out from its grounds. French forces were evacuating as many Westerners in the school and surrounding neighborhood as chose to leave. The school appeared to be empty after the evacuation. About 300 Americans live in the city, Ivory Coast's second-largest and home to a half-million residents - now all trapped. ''Our idea is to get as many out as possible,'' Richard Buangan, a U.S. diplomat helping to coordinate at the staging area, said of the Americans. U.S. special forces troops spilled out of C-130s at the rescue staging area in Yammoussoukro, 40 miles to the south of the rebel city. Unloading duffel bags and metal boxes, U.S. commandos set up base on the side of the airport tarmac. The American troops refused comment as they worked. Bouake and the northern opposition stronghold of Korhogo fell into rebel hands during a bloody coup attempt Thursday. The uprising killed at least 270 people in its first days. Ivory Coast's military and government has pledged to retake both cities. The country's military officers said only concern for civilian casualties was staving off full-scale attack. Firing broke out again on both sides of the mission around daybreak Wednesday, said Neil Gilliland, speaking by telephone from the affiliated Free Will Baptist Missions in Nashville, Tenn. ''Nobody was firing at them, but there was gunfire all around,'' Gilliland said. Water and electricity in Bouake had been cut since the weekend, most shops were shuttered, and prices of food and fuel were skyrocketing, they said. Few braved the rebel barricades thrown up across the city. ''Everyone is at home. We're running out of everything,'' said one frightened Ivorian woman, contacted by telephone as she cowered in her home in Bouake. ''We are scared.'' In Yamoussoukro, a handful of American soldiers jumped off the planes on touchdown at mid-afternoon, securing the tarmac as gun-mounted Humvees drove off the ramps. Armed U.S. troops, some in helmets, then filed down onto the airstrip. The United States deployed about 200 soldiers, mostly special forces, to Ghana overnight to aid in any rescue missions for Americans as Ivory Coast battles to put down the 6-day-old uprising by coup forces. The insurgency - 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 the country's first-ever coup in 1999 shattered stability in the once-prosperous country. The uprising has sparked ethnic, political and religious hostilities that divide Ivory Coast's predominantly Christian south and its largely Muslim north. The mutineers, dismissed from the army for suspected loyalty to ousted former junta leader Gen. Robert Guei, have found at least a measure of support from the Muslim northerners - who complain of being treated as second-class citizens by the southern-based government. Tens of thousands of Westerners and hundreds of thousands of immigrants from neighboring Muslim countries have made their homes in Ivory Coast, until its first-ever 1999 coup an anchor of stability and prosperity in West Africa. Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa-producer, and remains an economic powerhouse for the region. The nation's Muslim, African immigrants are much more vulnerable than the Westerners in the unrest, with much less hope of rescue. Paramilitary police burned a shantytown - housing numbers of Muslim immigrants and northerners - over the weekend. Gbagbo's government blames Guei in Thursday's coup attempt. Loyalist paramilitary police shot and killed Guei in the first hours of the uprising. His family and aides, and some insurgents, challenge the government contention that the ex-junta leader was behind the uprising. AP-NY-09-25-02 1338EDT Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.