ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast ? French troop reinforcements and helicopters touched down in Ivory Coast on Sunday to protect Westerners in the former French colony, as a showdown loomed between loyalists and forces behind the West African nation’s bloodiest-ever military uprising.

Fears grew of wider conflict splitting West Africa’s onetime economic powerhouse, as thousands of angry civilians in the second-largest city, Bouake, marched in support of coup forces who have seized that city, and one other in Ivory Coast’s predominantly Muslim north.

A Liberian refugee and her baby sit among their possessions at a temporary shelter for displaced people in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Paramilitary police set fire to a mainly Muslim shanty town on Saturday and then set fire to makeshift shacks, beating the occupants and leading many away.

“We are armed to the teeth, and there is no going back,” a rebel commander known by the nom de guerre Samsara 110 declared in the rebel-held city of Korhogo.

Late Sunday, shooting was heard in Bouake, but it died down after about 30 minutes. Residents were on edge, waiting for a government assault that President Laurent Gbagbo’s government has pledged since Saturday would be imminent.

Worried residents of Bouake included about 100 American children, ranging in age from infants to 12-year-old school children, who attend a boarding school in the city. The children are the sons and daughters of missionaries working across West Africa.

Ivory Coast’s north-south, Muslim-Christian divides have widened dangerously since Thursday’s failed coup. It was launched by insurgents who apparently included a core group of 700-800 ex-soldiers angry over their recent purge from the army for suspected disloyalty.

The uprising left at least 270 dead, by government count in the rebellion’s first days. The dead included a Cabinet minister and former military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, accused by the government of having sparked the coup attempt a contention denied by the rebels.

Defeated in Abidjan and two other cities, coup forces have dug in the north, base of support for opposition leader Alassane Dramane Ouattara.

Late Sunday, a convoy of French troops headed north from Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Abidjan, ready to move out to protect French and international citizens in Bouake, 60 miles away, a spokesman for the French military base in Abidjan said.

French transport helicopters and a reported 100 extra French troops landed in Abidjan, the commercial capital, in the early hours Sunday, reinforcing approximately 600 troops already based there.

France said it deployed the reinforcements to protect the nation’s 20,000 French citizens and others in the international community. Ivory Coast denied asking for French help putting down the uprising.