Chad says it drove back rebel attack
April 10, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Chad’s army has repulsed an attempt by rebels to seize a southeastern town, the latest clash in a rebel campaign to try to disrupt elections next month, a government official said on Monday.
“Our forces are back in Haraze-Mangueigne,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters in N’Djamena.
In Sunday’s attack, the most recent by insurgents fighting to topple President Idriss Deby, the rebel United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) said it seized Haraze-Mangueigne and two towns further northwest, Am Timan and Abou-Deia.
But the government official denied the rebels had ever taken Am Timan and Abou-Deia and said the Chadian army was pushing them back from Haraze-Mangueigne, which lies near the border with Central African Republic.
Over the last few months, rebels who are demanding that Deby quit after nearly 16 years of rule over the landlocked central African oil producer have stepped up military strikes against government positions in the east, near the Sudan border.
Chad’s government accuses Sudan of backing efforts to oust Deby and of allowing Chadian rebels to use the Sudanese Darfur region, already torn by political and ethnic conflict, as a base to launch their attacks. These charges are denied by Khartoum.
A spokesman for the FUC rebels, Abdullahi Abdel Karim, told Reuters on Monday that rebel forces had withdrawn from Haraze-Mangueigne, Am Timan and Abou-Deia for “strategic reasons” after occupying them for a few hours on Sunday.
“There has been no fighting today,” he told Reuters by satellite telephone. He said he was speaking from a position near Haraze-Mangueigne.
“NO REBEL ATTACK”
A doctor working in Am Timan’s hospital, Diondoul Gang-non, said there had been no rebel attack there on Sunday.
“Everything is calm … There were no shots fired and we saw no rebels here yesterday,” he told Reuters.
The Chad government official accused the rebels, who include scores of senior army deserters, of trying to derail a May 3 presidential election in which Deby will stand for, and is expected to win, a third five-year term as president.
Chad’s government on Sunday sent reinforcements to confront the rebel assault on Haraze-Mangueigne. It said a rebel column of 22 vehicles had crossed through Central African Republic territory to make the attack.
Chad and Sudan have accused each other of backing rebels fighting their respective governments but agreed at a summit hosted by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli in February to stop insurgents setting up bases on their territories.
Chad says the latest fighting in the east shows that Sudan is not respecting the Tripoli agreement.
In Chad’s upcoming election, Deby, who came to power in a 1990 revolt from the east and won elections in 1996 and 2001, will face two candidates from allied parties and two members of his own government.
The main opposition, which is boycotting the poll, accuses these candidates of standing simply to legitimise the election.
(Reuters)