Fresh fighting broke out overnight between rebels and government soldiers as French troops wound down a mission to help foreigners escape the rebel-held city of Bouake. Senior French military sources confirmed skirmishes took place around loyalist positions north of Tiebissou, a town 40 miles from Bouake where some French troops are based. The rebels said they had repelled an attack overnight and vowed to advance south toward the administrative capital Yamoussoukro, where the French have brought hundreds of foreigners evacuated from Bouake over the past two days. "They attacked our people near Tiebissou but we managed to hold our positions," rebel Corporal George Kouassi said by telephone. "We are going to try and clear them out in Tiebissou and then march toward Yamoussoukro," he said.

With the region's main powers stepping up to offer help to embattled President Laurent Gbagbo, the government said it would soon launch an offensive to drive back rebels it accused of planning to seize power in a September 19 coup.

Ivory Coast has requested French logistical support to allow its own troops to take on the rebels. So far France has affirmed that it has no compelling evidence that the rebellion is foreign-backed and therefore does not feel obliged to invoke the terms of a defense pact with its former colony.

Residents said on Friday the insurgents had arrived in the northwestern town of Odienne, consolidating their hold on the north of the country of 16 million.

Fear quickly spread south down the 170-mile road to Man, a key coffee-growing center in Africa's biggest producer.
"The authorities told us to shut up shop and go home in the afternoon," said one coffee buyer in Man. "They told us that they feared that after the fall of Odienne it would soon be the turn of Man."

Further to the east, desperate Ivorians tried to sneak out of Bouake, the biggest city after Abidjan.

MINISTERS ESCAPE

State media said among those who made it out of the city were two ministers who were trapped at the launch of a regional soccer tournament in Bouake when the rebels struck.

Sports Minister Francois Amichia and Youth Minister Lazare Koffi Koffi said they were briefly captured, then held in safe houses and finally took back paths to walk out of the city.

By nightfall on Friday many of scores of French soldiers sent to allow safe passage to foreigners across the uncertain front line had pulled back to a camp at Brobo, some 13 miles east of Bouake.

Nervous Ivorians headed back from checkpoints after being told to go home by rebels who assured them they would be protected from a long-promised government offensive.

"If we have taken our time it is because we want to limit the collateral damage to civilians as much as we can," Defense Minister Moise Lida Kouassi told parliament on Friday.

Key countries in the Economic Community of West African States regional bloc have pledged their support for Ivory Coast's elected government and are due to meet in a summit in Ghana on Sunday to discuss the crisis.

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade said up to 4,000 regional troops could be deployed in Ivory Coast rapidly.
The African Union added its support.

"One cannot accept today that insurgents take power in a coup d'etat. That's finished," the pan-African body's top official, Amara Essy, said after talks with Gbagbo. Essy is an Ivorian himself.

The Ivory Coast conflict has raised fears over cocoa supplies from a country producing 40 percent of the world's crop. It casts a shadow over the future of a region already battered by wars in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Ghanaian officials said the rebels -- whose leadership is unclear -- would not be officially invited to Sunday's regional summit but might still be there in an informal capacity.

A 1999 coup put paid to Ivory Coast's reputation for stability and hundreds died in turbulent 2000 elections, but the latest crisis is the first time rival armed factions have occupied large parts of the country for such a long period.