UN condemns rebel attack on Chad

The UN Security Council today condemned the rebel attack on Chad and gave a green light for France and other countries to help the government repel the force.

The statement was approved after Chad’s ambassador Mahamat Adoum sent a letter to the council appealing to all countries to help it end the aggression by rebels who he said are attempting “to overthrow its legal government by force”.

The council “calls upon member states to provide support, in conformity with the United Nations Charter, as requested by the government of Chad”, the statement read.

Government forces and rebels clashed for a third day in Chad’s capital today with gunfire and shelling heard throughout the city.

Thousands of people were fleeing the city. Casualties from the fighting in N’djamena were believed to be high, and the violence threatened peacekeeping and aid operations intended to stabilise a wide area of Africa that borders the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan.

Helene Caux, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, said today: “Fighting and shelling has started again in N’djamena.”

She spoke from Geneva and said that staff on the ground in Chad had told her it was impossible to move around the city.

The rebels arrived in the capital’s outskirts on Friday after a three-day push across the desert from Chad’s eastern border with Sudan.

Riding on 250 pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns, between 1,000 and 1,500 insurgents entered the city early on Saturday, quickly spreading through the streets and reportedly trapping President Idriss Deby in his palace.

But by yesterday, government forces were strafing rebel positions with helicopter gunships and bombarding them with tanks.

French military spokesman Captain Christophe Prazuck said: “The Chadian army fought very vigorously and continuously regained ground around the presidential palace until yesterday afternoon when the rebels announced they were leaving the city.

“The fighting was heavy, the weapons used were heavy. Probably many people were injured or killed.”

France, the former colonial power, has a longstanding military presence in Chad and is evacuating hundreds of foreigners from the country.

Rebel spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said today that the insurgents had withdrawn from the city “to give the population a chance to get out”, leaving open the possibility of a renewed offensive.

He said the rebels controlled the two strategic bridges straddling the Chari River, on the eastern side of the city.

But the government said it had control of the city – “the whole of N’djamena is under control and the savage mercenaries are routed,” interior minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir said.

Since the outset of the fighting, Chadian officials have repeatedly accused Sudan of backing the rebels.

An aide to French president Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday that Sudan wanted to crush Mr Deby’s regime to keep the European Union from deploying a peacekeeping force that is to operate along the volatile border with Darfur.

Sudan has repeatedly denied any involvement.

At the height of the fighting, France offered to take Mr Deby out of Chad. But the president, who came to power as the head of a rebel force that seized N’djamena in 1990, apparently turned down the offer.