YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast — U.S. forces landed in Ivory Coast on Wednesday and French soldiers rolled to the rescue of 100 American children and others at a mission school, moving in to safeguard Westerners trapped in the West Africa nation's deadliest uprising.
Two U.S. C-130 cargo planes touched down in the forest-ringed Ivory Coast capital of Yamoussoukro, staging area for a French mission into the besieged rebel-held city of Bouake earlier in the day.
U.S. officials said about 300 Americans were in Bouake, trapped with the half-million other residents cowering in their homes in the face of a promised government offensive to retake Ivory Coast's second-largest city.
"Our idea is to get as many out as possible," Richard Buangan, an American diplomat helping to coordinate at the staging area, said of the Americans in Bouake, 40 miles north of Yamoussoukro. He spoke in the capital to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the U.S. soldiers arrive.
Earlier Wednesday, about 100 well-armed French forces broke through to Bouake's outskirts to reach the U.S.-led International Christian Academy. Two hundred foreigners, including 100 Americans, have been trapped at the whitewashed mission compound as gunfire sounds outside.
Children and teachers at the academy "are perfectly secure and are protected by our forces," French army Col. Charles de Kersabiec declared.
The church group had sent calls for help for the school in the city after rebels scaled the walls Monday, firing from its grounds.
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 Ivorian woman. "We are scared."
In Yamoussoukro, a handful of American soldiers jumped off the planes on touchdown, securing the tarmac as gun-mounted Humvees drove off the ramps. Armed, uniformed 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 a 6-day-old uprising by coup forces. Another AP reporter watched earlier as two C-130s took off from the U.S. staging area at Accra, Ghana's capital.
The rush to rescue Westerners comes as Ivory Coast's government struggles to retake two cities, Bouake and the northern opposition stronghold of Korhogo, lost to insurgents since Thursday's coup attempt. At least 270 people died just in the first days of the uprising.
The French army moved more troops into the area around Bouake, where about 100 soldiers have been positioned since Tuesday.
A convoy of French trucks, jeeps and armored personnel vehicles moved up Wednesday from their crisis base at Yamoussoukro, where helicopters and trucks were standing by to ferry Westerners out of Bouake.
Tense residents reached by telephone Wednesday said rebels still controlled the city and could be seen cruising the streets in commandeered vehicles.
In the other rebel-held city, Korhogo, rebels armed with guns and rocket launchers went house to house, rounding up any paramilitary police and soldiers not yet captured, and confiscating their weapons.
Trapped in their houses, with no sign of a long-promised government offensive to rout out the rebels, residents were becoming increasingly frustrated.
"All my activities are paralyzed. I'm having trouble feeding my family," said mechanic Souleymane Coulibaly. "If this continues, it is we who will go dislodge the mutineers"
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 the country's first-ever coup in 1999 shattered stability in the once-prosperous country.
President Laurent Gbagbo has pledged a full-scale battle to rout the rebels from Bouake and Korhogo. Military leaders say only concern for civilians has stalled the assault on Bouake.
About 20,000 French and thousands of other Westerners live in Ivory Coast, the economic powerhouse of former French West Africa. None is yet known to have been killed in the five days of fighting.
The hundreds of thousands of guest workers from neighboring Muslim countries are far more vulnerable than Westerners in the uprising, which has sparked deadly rivalries between the mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.
Paramilitary police over the weekend burned a mostly Muslim shantytown in Abidjan, and Muslim northerners and guest workers report arrests and beatings.