Chad’s army, rebels clash on Sudan border
Mar 23, 2006 (HADJER MARFAIN, Chad) — Chad’s army and head of state said the military had clashed with and routed 150 rebels in a battle earlier this week in a strategically important zone near the border with Sudan.
The fighting took place on Monday and Tuesday at Hadjer Marfain, (“hyena mountain” in Arabic) after a Chadian government army patrol came across a force of about 150 rebels from the SCUD (Foundation for Change, National Unity and Democracy) group, officials said.
“The action we have undertaken has ended all the disorder caused by the adventurers and uncertainty for many citizens,” President Idriss Deby Itno said Thursday in Adre, 500 kilometres (300 miles) east of the capital.
“The army deserters and those behind the foiled coup bid of last March 14 were first in Sudan, then in Hadjer Marfain, so it was time to put an end to the destabilisation of the country,” Deby told journalists in Adre, where he was supervising military operations.
The head of state asserted that there had been six coup attempts since 2004 as well as the wave of desertions at the end of 2005, and again charged that his foes had “material and financial help” from Sudan.
“The engagement that followed lasted more than three hours and the enemy withdrew across the mountains to El-Geneina” inside Sudan, said General Abakar Youssouf Itano, chief of staff of the Chadian army.
“It wasn’t the enemy’s firepower that made it last so long but the hostile nature of the terrain, which includes a long chain of mountains, a large wadi (dried up watercourse) and thick forest,” he told reporters taken to the scene of the fighting.
“The Chadian army pitted 450 men against 150 rebels,” he said.
Reporters saw the graves of about a dozen rebels, buried, according to Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djallah, out of respect. But he said that other rebels had died in the hills, giving a figure of 70 dead on the rebel side.
No official figure was available for Chadian government losses but an officer who did not wish to be named spoke of 11 dead and 14 wounded.
Evidence of the battle, in the form of spent cartridges and shells, abandoned boots and blood-stained uniforms littered the ground.
The Chadian government showed off a fleet of 120 heavily armed all-terrain vehicles, each carrying 15 men, which had taken up position along 12 kilometres (eight miles) of the wadi which winds through the hills and marks the border between Sudan and Chad for some 40 kilometres (25 miles).
“This wadi is a strategic position,” said Djallah. “If you occupy it you prevent the enemy advancing.”
“Along a strip running for 900 kilometres along the frontier we have deployed more than 10,000 men to ensure the total security of our territory.”
“With this rout, SCUD’s operational abilities are reduced to nothing,” said Itno.
In a statement issued in Libreville, a SCUD leader, Yaya Dillo Djerrou, alleged Deby “prepared his offensive … with the active support of the French ambassador and logistic support from Operation Epervier (Sparrowhawk),” the French military deployed in Chad.
The French flew in the Chadian troops and “followed SCUD movements with reconnaissance planes” the statement said.
French armed forces spokesman in Paris, Colonel Gerard Dubois, said the French military had evacuated wounded Chadian soldiers and flown Deby to the region near the border, but denied the French played any part in the fighting.
Deby earlier this month cashiered 70 army officers and troops, including onetime aides from his own ethnic group, the Zaghawa, who had deserted and were held to have joined rebel ranks.
Among those dismissed in a decree signed by Deby were Generals Seby Aguid and Issaka Diar, who were close to the central African country’s leader but deserted on February 17, when they were on a mission to negotiate a surrender by the rebels.
Those concerned, who were named in the decree, include two colonels, other army officers and non-commissioned officers. The authorities say they defected to SCUD.
In Adre, Deby said he would “speed up reform” in the armed services. “The country needs a national army worthy of the name, to ease peace and democracy in Chad.”
(ST/AFP)