French forces rescue 1,500 from city under siege

French forces withdrew yesterday from a besieged rebel-held city in Ivory Coast that was under threat of imminent government attack.

They declared that their evacuation was over after helicopters and convoys had taken hundreds of Westerners to safety. "It's finished," Lieutenant-Colonel Ange-Antoine Leccia said in the capital, Yamoussoukro, the staging point for Western nations' rescue of their nationals in Bouaké. "All French soldiers have gone."

French forces, deployed by the hundreds, evacuated 1,500 French, Americans and other Western nationals from Ivory Coast's second-largest city.

Some French troops would pull back only to a nearby area, Lt-Col Leccia said, refusing to identify it. Authorities indicated that a small French contingent would remain within range, ready to take out any French or other Westerners that had been missed.

On Thursday, French forces had arranged a 48-hour cease-fire with rebels to clear the way for a rapid withdrawal of their citizens and others from the city, which normally has a population of half a million.

Bouaké and another city, Korhogo, which have been under rebel control since a failed coup attempt on 19 September, have been declared war zones by President Laurent Ggagbo.