Thousands flee Chad capital

Februray 4, 2008 (NDJAMENA) — Thousands of civilians fled the Chadian capital N’Djamena early on Monday after rebel forces said they had pulled back from the city following two days of fighting, while the government said it had driven them out.

A Reuters reporter inside N’Djamena said there were no sounds of fighting this morning and some people were venturing out of their homes.

Another Reuters correspondent who was across the Logone-Chari river from the city reported a flood of refugees streaming over the river bridge into Cameroon.

Military vehicles belonging to government forces were moving around the city. Bodies of dead civilians were visible in some streets, killed in two days of heavy fighting over the weekend that followed a rebel thrust into the city.

Rebel spokesman Abderamane Koullamalah said rebel forces had made a tactical withdrawal from the capital to meet up with reinforcements coming from the east with fresh ammunition and supplies.

“We’re pulling out so we can come back again,” he said, quoted by the Chadian opposition Website Alwihda.

But President Idriss Deby’s government said it had driven the rebels out of the capital.

“The whole of N’Djamena is under control and these mercenaries in the pay of Sudan have been scattered,” Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir told French radio RFI late on Sunday.

Taking advantage of the pause in the fighting, thousands of Chadians carrying children and belongings left N’Djamena to cross the Ngueli bridge into northern Cameroon.

(Reuters)