NDJAMENA (AFP) – Rebels seized Chad’s capital Ndjamena on Saturday after intense fighting with government forces, as President Idriss Deby Itno remained holed up in the presidential palace, a military source said.
“The whole of the city is in the hands of the rebels. It’s down to mopping-up operations,” according to the source. Chadian rebel spokesman Abakar Tollimi said the president could leave his palace where he has been trapped by insurgent forces, if he so wishes.
“We suppose that Deby is inside. If he wants to leave we have no problem,” Tollimi told AFP by satellite telephone. “We control the situation, we control the city, there are some pockets of resistance,” he said.
Tollimi said government troops were around the presidential palace and using heavy weapons against the rebels, who military sources said earlier were armed with machine-guns, assault rifles and rocket launchers.
One source said that government tanks had fired on the rebels at Deby’s orders in a bid to break their grip. France sent an extra 150 troops to the central African country and prepared to evacuate its citizens, while French Defence Minister Herve Morin said rebels were battling government forces as they closed in on the presidential palace.
Despite the reports, Chad’s foreign minister told AFP that Deby was at the presidency and the situation was under control in the city.
“I spoke with the presidency 10 minutes ago and they assured me that the situation (was under) control,” Amad Allam-Mi said in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit, shortly before 1030 GMT.
Allam-Mi accused Sudan of masterminding the rebel offensive with the aim to stop the so-called EUFOR mission that is to protect refugees from the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, just over Chad’s eastern border, from deploying.
“Since the announcement that this European force will arrive, the Sudanese government has stepped up the number of attacks, to discourage the European Union,” he told Radio France Internationale in an interview. “Sudan does not want this force because it would open a window on the genocide in Darfur,” he said, adding that Sudan was trying “to install a regime in Chad that will bow to it.”
The EUFOR mission announced Friday a temporary delay in troop flights to Ndjamena, and an EU military spokesman said Saturday there were no plans to send members to Chad over the weekend as it was “still very unstable” on the ground.
Heavy fighting between some 2,000 rebels opposed to Deby and government forces raged in the capital on Saturday, a French army official said.
The rebels had entered the capital in trucks armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and Kalashnikov assault rifles. Intense firing during the morning had died down by midday (1100 GMT), but a column of black smoke was seen rising from near the presidential palace.
The rebels, in olive-green battledress and white armbands, were roaring around in camouflaged pick-up trucks, witnesses said, and had been welcomed with joy in some districts.
Witnesses also said the main prison in Ndjamena had been stormed and inmates released, while security sources reported some looting had taken place.
The French foreign ministry strongly condemned “the attempt to seize power” in Chad by “armed groups from the outside”.
“France supports the unity and stability of Chad. In this respect, it calls for the end of violence, the resumption without delay and the acceleration of efforts to achieve regional stability, particularly through the African Union and the United Nations,” a ministry statement said.
France also said the latest events should not prejudice the European Union and African Union missions to the region to protect civilians from Darfur. “We remain very concerned by the safety of local civilian populations, refugees and displaced, for the protection of whom the international deployments in eastern Chad and Darfur remain indispensable.”
French troops have been deployed in Chad since 1986 under the codename Sparrowhawk, and were on Saturday reinforced with a combat unit of extra troops in response to the current situation, bringing to 1,450 the number permanently posted there.
French forces have been assisting the government with logistics and intelligence but have not been allowed to intervene militarily in the fighting.
The EUFOR Chad-Central African Republic mission has a UN Security Council mandate to back up, for one year, some 300 UN police officers sent to monitor camps for Darfur refugees and internally displaced persons.
About 234,000 Darfur refugees, along with 179,000 displaced eastern Chadians and 43,000 Central Africans also uprooted by strife and rebellion in the north of their country, are housed in camps in the region.
A spokesman for French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had had a long conversation with his Chadian counterpart, and held two emergency meetings on the situation.
France also warned its nationals to remain indoors and prepared to evacuate them.
The country has 1,500 citizens in Chad, a former French colony, with 85 percent of them in the capital. The offensive — the biggest since April 2006 — comes after rebel leaders Timan Erdimi, Mahamat Nouri and Adbelwahid Aboud Makaye joined forces in mid-December after a peace pact with Deby fell apart.
African Union leaders meeting in Addis Ababa said the body “strongly condemns” the rebel attacks and “demands that an immediate end be put to these attacks and resulting bloodshed”.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his concern at the fighting, and the world body has evacuated around 160 non-essential staff from Ndjamena.