Rebels storm Chad capital

N'DJAMENA, April13 , 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Fierce fighting raged on Thursday, April13 , between government troops and rebels in the capital N'Djamena, prompting the African Union to call an emergency meeting on the crisis.

"The situation in N'Djamena is under the control of the defense and security forces," President Idriss Deby told French radio RFI, according to Reuters.

Saying he was speaking from the presidential palace in N'Djamena, Deby said the attacking insurgents were repulsed.

He repeated his government's accusations that neighboring Sudan was backing the rebels and said his forces would display captured prisoners and weapons to prove this.

The Sudanese government has denied helping the rebels.

Once highly regarded as a brilliant battlefield tactician, Deby's grip on power has been weakened over recent months by a wave of army desertions.

Rebels of the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) have vowed to overthrow him and take control of the landlocked central African oil producer.

Deby's opponents denounce what they see as his autocratic and clan-based rule and accuse him of corruption, particularly when it comes to managing the country's new oil revenues.

Deby who won power in a 1990 military revolt from the east.

According to the CIA facts book, Muslims make up some 51 percent of Chad's estimated ten million people.

Calm

FUC rebels said they attacked N'Djamena and the eastern town of Adre on the Sudan border.

"Our forces have entered Adre," FUC leader Abdoulaye Abdel Karim told Reuters by satellite phone. He said he was speaking from Chad.

After several hours of intense artillery and machinegun fire in the northeast of the city, which kept residents sheltering in their homes, the fighting appeared to lessen, residents and diplomats said.

"It's definitely calmed significantly," one diplomat, who asked not to be named, told Reuters, although he said there were still reports of some pockets of combat.

Government troops used helicopters to counterattack against a rebel column which had advanced to the city under cover of darkness, diplomats said.

The fighting took place in the northeast of N'Djamena, where the national parliament and a Libyan-run hotel complex are located.

Chadian journalists were later taken to the area, where government officials showed them 30 rebel prisoners. A Reuters reporter saw at least one body.

French Role

A rebel leader accused French fighter planes of bombing several rebel-held towns in eastern Chad, causing an unknown number of civilian casualties.

"We have just learned that since this morning, in eastern Chad, French army aircraft have been carrying out a military intervention," former foreign minister Laona Gong, the FUC representative in France, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"We deplore the numerous civilian victims of the French bombings in the towns of Adre and Moudeina", he said, without giving a precise number of casualties.

Gong charged that France "is not remaining neutral" and accused it of lending "blind" support to Deby's regime.

The French Defense Ministry said a French Mirage jet had fired warning shots near a rebel column advancing on N'Djamena.

The long-distance shots were fired around 250 kilometers ( 150miles) east of N'Djamena, and caused no casualties, ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said.

Bureau described the shots as a "political signal, with the framework of the security of our nationals" in Chad.

But he denied Gong's charges, saying French forces "are not involved in military actions" in Chad.

The French Defense Ministry has earlier played down the fighting.

"It seemed that what happened this morning were isolated, localized actions that do not translate into a coordinated act by organized units," a Defense Ministry spokesman said in Paris.

France, Chad's former colonial ruler, has1 , 200soldiers and six combat aircraft stationed in the country.

Emergency Meeting

The African Union's Peace and Security Council will meet in emergency session on Thursday to discuss the deteriorating situation in Chad.

"An urgent Peace and Security Council meeting has been called for this afternoon to look into the situation and the latest developments in Chad," said Ghassim Wane, director of the pan-African body's Conflict Management Center.

France has advised the estimated1 , 500French civilians present in Chad, most of them in N'Djamena, to exercise "caution", but has issued no order to evacuate.

Both the UN and the US were planning to evacuate non-essential staff from the capital, diplomats said.

Esso Chad, a subsidiary of US oil major Exxon Mobil which operates an oil pipeline in Chad, had already evacuated some staff and their families, diplomats said.

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Accusing Sudan of backing a failed rebel assault on his capital, Chad's President Idriss Déby broke diplomatic ties with Khartoum yesterday, and warned the international community that 200,000 Darfur refugees would soon have to find somewhere else to stay.

The Chadian leader staged a public walkabout in the city's main square, surveying some 160 rebel prisoners, a fleet of captured trucks and an array of confiscated weaponry including rocket-propelled grenade launchers and ageing AK-47s, the day after his forces repelled the boldest attempt to oust him so far in the run-up to May's presidential elections.

Mr Déby held aloft Sudanese identity papers and pointed out "Made in Sudan" logos for the cameras, as he blamed Khartoum for Thursday's dawn attack on his capital, which officials say killed 300 people and wounded about 200 more.

"There's no Chadian rebellion, it's the Sudanese government that has a programme to destabilise Chad," Mr Déby, sporting tinted glasses and surrounded by a heavy military guard, told reporters. "We have taken the decision to break diplomatic relations with Sudan from today, and to proceed to close the border."

Khartoum has repeatedly denied the allegations, but Friday's developments will only heighten tensions in the region. The international community is already facing an uphill battle to end a three-year conflict next door in Darfur that has sent about 200,000 refugees fleeing to a string of camps in eastern Chad.

"It's up to the international community between now and June ... to find another host country," Mr Déby said, although he did not say what would happen after his deadline.

The UN refugee agency said it had read media reports of the president's comments but had not received any official notification from the Chadian government.

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