U.S. special forces sent to Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- U.S. troops headed to West Africa on Tuesday to safeguard 100 American schoolchildren holed up in a rebel-held city after the bloodiest-ever uprising in the Ivory Coast. Frightened residents reported heavy artillery and gunfire.\nFrench 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.\n"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.\n"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.\nThe 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 as rebels.\nThe 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.\nThe U.S. State Department, meanwhile, 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.\nAn American expeditionary force and British troops already were on the ground in Ivory Coast, Ghanaian and French military and government officials said.\n"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.\nThe U.S. troops were headed to neighboring Ghana and were expected to arrive Wednesday morning, a Pentagon official said on condition of anonymity. A senior official in Ghana's Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. troops were aboard three C-130 cargo planes and would use a base at Ghana's capital, Accra, as a staging area for any evacuation.\n"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.\nTensions were "understandably high" at the school, Boucher added, but all students and staff are believed safe.\nU.S. defense officials spoke of deployment of just under 200 American troops. No general evacuation was planned of Americans, Boucher said.\nOne 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.\n"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 said. France is Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler.\nA new convoy of French reinforcements rumbled into the capital after dark, at least a dozen in number.\nA 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.\nGbagbo 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.\nTense residents in Bouake reported an hour of heavy-gun and artillery fire Tuesday afternoon.