Chad: State radio off air as rebels advance

Chad state radio went off the air today as rebels advanced into the capital, opposition leader Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh said.

He made the claims in a telephone call from the central African nation’s embattled capital, N’Djamena.

Saleh said rebels had entered the city and shooting that had erupted in the morning appeared to have died down.

He said there were no soldiers in his neighbourhood and the state broadcaster had gone off the air in the morning. “At the moment we are not hearing any firing … The rebels are in the city. Civilians are in the streets. They are watching what is happening,” said Saleh, the co-ordinator of Chad’s main non-armed opposition alliance.

Colonel Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman, said around 1,000 to 1,500 rebels had entered the capital, N’Djamena, and some were approaching the presidential palace.

Rebels had grouped outside the capital overnight. Early today, groups of rebels entered the city and were spreading through different neighbourhoods, the spokesman said.

France’s military has about 1,400 men in Chad, about 1,200 of those in the capital. France’s embassy in Chad asked French citizens today to gather in three secure locations, officials said.

Chad, a French colony until 1960, has been convulsed by civil wars and invasions since independence, and the recent discovery of oil has only increased the intensity of the struggle for power in the largely desert country.

The most recent series of rebellions began in 2005 in the country’s east, occurring at the same time as the conflict in neighbouring Sudan’s western region of Darfur saw a rise in violence. One Chadian rebel group launched a failed assault on N’djamena, in April 2006.

The governments of Chad and Sudan repeatedly exchange accusations the one is backing the other’s rebel groups.

Chadian President Idriss Deby himself came to power at the head of a rebellion in 1990; he won elections since, but none of the votes were deemed free or fair. He brought a semblance of peace after three decades of civil war and an invasion by Libya, but became increasingly isolated and members of his own family have joined Chad’s latest rebellion.

UN officials estimate that around three million people have been uprooted by conflicts in the region, including the fighting in western Sudan’s Darfur region, which borders Chad, and rebellions in Central African Republic.