Chad’s army encircles rebel convoy in east- official
Oct 29, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Chad’s armed forces encircled a rebel convoy in the far east of the country on Sunday taking many prisoners in fierce fighting just a day after N’Djamena accused Sudan of bombing the region, the defence minister said.
Government forces pursuing the convoy, which was heading for Sudan’s Darfur region after briefly seizing two Chadian towns earlier this week, encircled it in the scrubland around Hadjer Meram some 70 km (44 miles) from the border, the minister said.
The latest clashes came after President Idriss Deby’s government accused Sudan of bombing four towns along its eastern frontier on Saturday, provoking a tense diplomatic standoff only three months after the neighbours restored their relations.
The two oil producing nations in Africa’s arid heart accuse one another of supporting rebels opposed to their governments.
“We were pursuing the rebels and we encircled them. Heavy fighting took place this morning,” Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah told Reuters. He said it was too early to give casualty figures, but the army had taken many rebel prisoners.
The long-running insurgency against Deby, who seized power in a 1990 coup, had fallen quiet following a lighting raid across the desert on the dusty capital N’Djamena in April. Hundreds of people died as government troops defeated the rebels, with the aid of French military intelligence, taking scores of them captive.
But last week a heavily armed convoy of the newly formed United Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) penetrated deep into Chad before melting into the desert as government reinforcements arrived.
N’Djamena said the rebels fled to Sudan and it repeated accusations that Khartoum was backing the insurgency.
On Saturday, Chad accused Sudan of bombing the towns of Bahai, Tine, Karyari and Bamina, destroying homes and sowing panic among residents just a few kilometres (miles) from the frontier with the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur.
Khartoum, which alleges that Chad supports rebels in Darfur, denied its air force had taken part in any operation which would violate a deal in August to restore diplomatic relations after months of tension.
Chad’s rebels, divided into several ethnic factions, demand the resignation of Deby, who won a fresh five-year term in May at elections boycotted by the opposition as a farce. The opposition says only French support holds the regime in power, but French diplomats say the alternative to Deby is chaos.
“There is an urgent need for a political compromise with the political opposition, a military victory against the armed opposition, and the securing of the eastern border with Sudan for stability to return to Chad,” political risk consultancy Global Insight wrote in a report on Friday.
(Reuters)