US Military Toops & Planes Arrive in Ghana

... to help US "rescue" citizens form Ivory Coast
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) - The first of four U.S. military planes landed Wednesday in the West African nation of Ghana, on a mission to protect Americans amid fighting in neighboring Ivory Coast, airport officials in Ghana said.

Around 100 American children, as well as U.S. staffers and other nationals, are pinned down in a boarding school in Ivory Coast's second largest city, Bouake, which has been held by rebels since Thursday. Government troops are moving in, vowing to retake the city.

The United States announced Tuesday it would be sending just under 200 troops to aid Americans pinned down in Ivory Coast's bloodiest-ever military uprising — particularly, a school in an Ivory Coast central city threatened by growing fighting.

The first U.S. military plane arrived just before dawn at Ghana's Kotoka International Airport in Accra, officials there said. Ghana Foreign ministry officials here have said they expected four U.S. military aircraft in the deployment, including 3 C-130s.

French troops were also moving closer to Bouake, 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 a coup attempt Thursday.

"A very welcome development," said a relieved James Forlines, director of Free Will Baptist Foreign Missions, a Nashville, Tenn.-based church group that had sent calls for help overnight for the mission school in the cut-off city after rebels breached the school's walls, firing from its grounds.

"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.

The U.S. State Department 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.

"The U.S. European Command is moving forces to be in a closer position to provide for the safety of American citizens," a statement from the command said.

More U.S. troops headed to Ghana, to be used as a staging area for any evacuation, an official at Ghana's Foreign Ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"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.

No general evacuation was planned of Americans, Boucher said.

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.

A regional summit planned for this week in Morocco to try to restore peace in the Ivory Coast has been postponed until it is certain Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo can attend, a top Moroccan official said Tuesday.

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 pinned-down 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 the other rebel-held city, 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 multilane 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.