Chad rebels fight into N'Djamena
Chad rebels fight into N'Djamena
N'Djamena, Chad: Rebels in Chad seeking to overthrow President Idriss Deby battled their way into the capital N'Djamena yesterday and said they were securing it, but a minister said government forces still controlled the city.
Residents and diplomats said rebel fighters had entered the capital, but the situation remained confused.
Machine gun and heavy weapons fire, sometimes sporadic, sometimes more intense, could be heard as France prepared to evacuate French and other foreign nationals.
"We are in the process of securing the city," Abderamane Koullamalah, a spokesman for the unified rebel command, told Radio France International (RFI), saying he was speaking by phone from N'Djamena.
A Chadian opposition website, Alwihda, said the capital had fallen to the insurgents.
Denied
But a Chadian government minister of state, Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, denied this. "Chad's defence and security forces are in control in the capital," he told RFI. He said government troops were pursuing rebel units.
Abdallah Nassour said he was speaking from the Chadian presidency where he said Deby was directing operations.
Fighting took place around the presidential palace and parliament after the rebels, in trucks mounted with machine guns and other weapons, fought into the city. They had met little resistance as they advanced across the central African oil producer.
Radio France International said rebel fighters, some wearing white or yellow armbands, were seen all around the dusty city on the banks of the Chari river. Some looting had broken out.
African Union leaders attending a summit in Ethiopia condemned the rebels' entry into N'Djamena and threatened to kick them out of the 53-nation body if they took power.
"If the rebellion succeeds, certainly we will excommunicate them from the African Union," AU Chairman Jakaya Kikwete told a news conference in Addis Ababa. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi condemned the Chadian rebel assault as "a great violation".
Background
- Chad and Sudan, both oil exporters, trade accusations of hosting rebel groups to undermine the other, though each denies it. Deals brokered mainly by Libya have failed to end the enmity.
- Dissent over President Idriss Deby's handling of the dispute led to large-scale army desertions in 2004 and 2005, prompting him to dissolve his presidential guard and form a new elite force.
- A border attack by deserters in December 2005 signalled an escalation in the rebellion, with an increase in attacks on towns and government forces, mainly in eastern Chad.
- In April 2006, rebels surged right across Chad to reach N'Djamena in the west. Government forces repelled the attack, but hundreds of people are estimated to have been killed.
- Hostilities have ebbed and flowed since. Last year, hundreds were killed in battles between rebels and government in eastern Chad.
- Rebel factions and alliances are constantly shifting, complicating efforts by Deby to co-opt rebels.
- Eastern Chad's conflict is tied up with the civil war across the border in Sudan's Darfur region, where Sudanese government forces and Janjaweed militias have fought a range of Darfuri rebel factions since early 2003. About 240,000 Sudanese refugees have crossed into Chad, where they live incamps along with 180,000 Chadians displaced by violence.
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