Yamousaoukro, Ivory Coast ? Waving U.S. flags and shouting ‘Vive la France!,” American schoolchildren escaped a rebel-held Ivory Coast city under siege Wednesday, as U.S. special forces and French troops moved in to rescue Westerners caught in the West African nation’s bloodiest uprising.

The evacuation under armed French military escort came amid fears that a full-scale battle could envelop Bouake, a central city of half-million residents. “We’re running out of everything,” said one frightened Ivorian woman, reached by telephone. “We are scared.”

U.S. and French troops moved out in force Wednesday to safeguard Westerners caught in a six-day uprising after a failed coup Sept. 19 in which at least 270 people died. With insurgents holed up in two cities, Bouake and the northern city of Korhogo, President Laurent Gbagbo has pledged an all-out battle to root out rebels in what was once West Africa’s most stable and prosperous country.

French troops entered Bouake early Wednesday after a night of new gunfire there to bring out teachers, staff and students at the mission school, including 100 American children, and escort them back safely to an airfield in the Ivory Coast capital of Yamoussoukro. U.S. C-130 cargo planes will fly them neighboring Ghana on Thursday morning, the Pentagon said.

The children waved American flags out of car windows as the convoy headed to safety down the region’s main road. “We’re very happy to get off campus,” one girl said as the convoy swept past.

One hundred of the 160 pupils at the school are American, as is the majority of the 40 teachers and other staffers. The other children are from a range of nationalities. The Pentagon said the French escorted out 191 people.

Americans from the International Christian Academy wave U.S. flags as they drive in a French military convoy from Bouake, Ivory Coast. French troops evacuated the children and American families who were trapped at a school Wednesday in the standoff between rebel soldiers and loyalist troops in the Ivory Coast.