YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast -- French forces withdrew Friday from the besieged rebel-held city of Bouake, declaring their evacuation over after helicopters and convoys bore hundreds of Americans and other Westerners to safety.

"It's finished," Lt. Col. Ange-Antoine Leccia said of the operation in Bouake, which was under threat of imminent government attack. "All French soldiers have gone."

Residents turned back

Thousands of Bouake residents, meanwhile, tried to flee the city on foot, bundles of belongings on their heads. They were turned back by well-armed and disciplined rebel forces manning checkpoints on the road out.

"This is your home. You should stay," the uniformed rebels told the desperate Africans.

French forces, deployed by the hundreds, had evacuated 1,500 foreign nationals from Bouake since early Thursday, using convoys and helicopters.

In the capital, Yamoussoukro, Tim Downs' voice broke as he spoke of leaving a country he has called home for 15 years. He left Bouake on Thursday.

"We live here. All my children graduated from school here," said Downs, a missionary from Overland Park, Kan. "My house looks like I just went out for bread and I'll be back in 20 minutes."

Leccia, refusing to give details, said some French troops would pull back only to a nearby area. Authorities indicated a skeletal French contingent would remain within range, ready to pluck out any foreigners who were missed in the two-day operation.

French forces, including reinforcements for the 600 normally stationed in the former French colony, had negotiated what officers in Bouake said was a 48-hour cease-fire with rebels to clear the way for a rapid withdrawal of their citizens and other foreigners from the city of a half-million.

The cease-fire was to expire early Saturday, but many feared the withdrawal of the Westerners and the French troops would clear the way for the threatened government assault.

The evacuation began as President Laurent Gbagbo's government declared Bouake and Korhogo, the other city in rebel hands since a Sept. 19 coup attempt, to be "war zones." The government pledged Thursday that an attack would come within hours.

Convoys and helicopters brought Western evacuees from Bouake 40 miles south to Yamoussoukro. Bouake is about 170 miles north and inland from the commercial capital and largest city, Abidjan, on the sea. Korhogo, another 150 miles north of Bouake, is near the border with Burkina Faso, which Ivory Coast accuses of supporting the insurrection.

U.S. military C-130 cargo planes waited in Yamoussoukro to fly Americans to neighboring Ghana if they wanted to leave the country, which is in the midst of its worst uprising.

Under protection of U.S. and French troops, missionaries and their families and other foreign residents were lined up at the airstrip in Yamoussoukro. Adults stood amid piles of baggage. Children dashed about as U.S. soldiers watched, assault rifles ready.

'Everyone is afraid'

Left behind, Bouake residents who did not try to flee were hidden in their homes, pinned down with power and water cut off for the past week, fearing they would be caught in the cross fire when the government assault finally comes.

"Everyone is afraid," said one Ivorian woman, reached by telephone Thursday in Bouake. "We'd like to be helped, too."

Huge crowds of stranded civilians formed in the north of the city as the French pulled out, fearfully seeking a way out of their own.

Ivory Coast was plunged into chaos after the failed coup attempt last week that involved a core group of 750 soldiers who were being purged from the military for suspected disloyalty.