French troops have ended their rescue of foreign citizens and withdrawn from the Ivorian city of Bouake, the scene of heavy fighting between government and rebel forces.

More than 1,500 people have been withdrawn from Ivory Coast's second city in the past 24 hours, many of them French citizens.

Everyone is afraid... We'd like to be helped, too

Ivorian woman

The rebels, who seized Bouake as part of an uprising last week, said they would allow the evacuation to proceed and agreed to a temporary ceasefire while it was carried out.

They also freed Sports Minister Francois Amichia, who was abducted in Bouake eight days ago during the uprising.

The circumstances of his release were unclear but a TV journalist told the AFP news agency that Mr Amichia had now joined President Laurent Gbagbo in the commercial capital Abidjan.

Bouake, as well as another city, Korhogo, and parts of the north are still held by the rebel soldiers.

A BBC correspondent in Yamoussoukro, near Bouake, says there are now fears of renewed fighting.

The government declared the city a war zone and says that anyone resisting them there is an enemy of the state and will be dealt with accordingly.

It is being reported from Bouake that the rebel soldiers are preventing thousands more Ivorians from leaving the city.

Still trapped

Thursday's evacuation was carried out by road and by air, with lorries and helicopters arriving at Yamoussoukro airport, 100km (60 miles) from Bouake.

In the city itself, government troops and rebels have given the French free access to find and bring out anyone who wants to leave.

Evacuees were taken to Yamoussoukro airport

Jamal Bittar, a French evacuee of Lebanese descent, said he was sad for local Ivorians unable to depart in the evacuation.

"We will pray for them," he told AP news agency.

"Everyone is afraid," one Ivorian woman told AP. "We'd like to be helped, too."

A group of schoolchildren, mainly Americans, who were earlier allowed to leave the city have now started arrived in neighbouring Ghana.

Thousands of residents took to the streets of Bouake on Thursday to demonstrate their backing for the mutineers.

One man calling himself a rebel commander said that all the soldiers who staged the uprising want, is reinstatement in the army and a pay rise.

The government say this has been a coup attempt supported by a neighbouring country.

Poised for attack

Ivorian Defence Minister Lida Moise Kouassi announced on television that Bouake was now a war zone.

Rebels are still in control of Bouake

He said loyalist troops were poised for a full-scale offensive to begin within hours against the rebels, who began their uprising on 19 September.

An Ivorian journalist in Bouake, Mohammed Fajah Barrie, told the BBC's Focus on Africa that civilians in Bouake had been demonstrating in favour of rebels and support for them in the town appeared to be growing.

Nigeria and Ghana have offered to send in troops and warplanes to support President Gbagbo.

Emergency summit

The West African regional organisation, Ecowas, announced it was going to hold an emergency summit this Sunday in Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, to discuss the current spate of violence.

The defence minister says an attack is imminent

Officials said the date was brought forward from 5 October when the summit was to be held in Senegal's capital, Dakar.

The death toll in the rebellion has jumped after the discovery of more than 100 bodies in Bouake, which was seized by mutinous troops last week.

At least 270 people were reported dead in the first few days of the mutiny.