French troops land in Ivory Coast

Residents salvage what they can from the Agban district of Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast

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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (CNN) -- French troops are arriving in the Ivory Coast as a deadly rebellion continues to destabilise the west African country, according to a journalist in the region.

The troops will protect the nearly 19,000 French nationals living in the Ivory Coast, according to Janine DiGiovanni, a reporter for The Times of London in Abidjan. They are not scheduled to intervene in the civil conflict.

In a sign of a possible truce, rebel soldiers in the northern city of Bouake told a Reuters journalist they were ready to negotiate, but also said they had the means to continue fighting, according to DiGiovanni.

The uprising began on Thursday morning when a group of disgruntled soldiers -- protesting against an attempt to demobilise them -- attacked a police centre in Abidjan, triggering heavy fighting in that city and others across the Ivory Coast.

Initially the rebels said they were loyal to the country's former leader, Gen. Robert Guei, who seized power in a military coup in 1999. Guei, who lost power after elections in 2001, was killed in the fighting on Thursday.

It is not clear who the rebels are loyal to, what their motive is, or whether neighbouring countries are arming them.

Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo has vowed to neutralise the rebels. "We are going to hunt down systematically everyone who is hidden in the so-called makeshift districts," he said on Saturday.

Violence in Abidjan on Saturday seemed to be in the form of ethnic reprisals against mainly Muslim refugees from neighbouring Burkina Faso. Houses were being burnt to the ground there.

A man carrying a rolled up sheet of iron passes a burning shack in Abidjan, where paramilitary forces set fire to Muslim areas

In Bouake, about 200 miles north of coastal Abidjan, nearly 750 rebels were reportedly regrouping on Saturday and had vowed not to leave the city without a bloody fight.

Further north, in Korhogo, rebels were reportedly handing out guns to civilians and driving through the streets, shooting their weapons into the air.

Bodies of the dead littered the streets of Abidjan on Friday, the results of fighting that began about 3 a.m. on Thursday and continued throughout the day.

Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou was also killed in the uprising. Government sources also said that Sports Minister Genevieve Bro Grebe was kidnapped along with the wife of Defence Minister Lyda Koussa.

The mutinous soldiers are believed to be well organised and well armed, with ground-to-ground missiles, which has officials fearing the revolt could lead to further destabilisation within the Ivory Coast, and perhaps neighbouring countries.

The revolt prompted Gbagbo -- who was visiting Rome at the time the uprising began -- to cancel a meeting with Pope John Paul II on Friday.

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