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"The situation in N'Djamena is under the control of the defense and security forces," said Deby. (Reuters).
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N'DJAMENA,
April 13, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Fierce
fighting raged on Thursday, April 13, 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 (150 miles) 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, has 1,200 soldiers and six combat
aircraft stationed in the country.
Emergency
Meeting
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Gong said French jets attacked rebels, accused Paris of "blind" support to Deby's regime.
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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 estimated 1,500 French 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.
