Chad anti-Deby rebels say they will strike again

Oct 30, 2006 (DAKAR) — Chadian rebels who fought government forces over the last week, briefly seizing two towns, said on Monday they were still inside Chad and would strike again against President Idriss Deby’s army.

A fighting column of the newly formed rebel United Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) pushed west last week towards N’Djamena before pulling back towards the eastern border with Sudan in the face of a government counter-attack.

Chad’s Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah said at the weekend that the government army in the landlocked central African oil producer had cornered the rebels, inflicting heavy casualties and taking many prisoners.

But the minister also said that the joint head of Chad’s armed forces, Gen. Moussa Sougui, had died after being wounded in the fighting. This appeared to be a fresh setback to Deby’s forces, which have been drained by desertions in the last year.

Speaking to Reuters by satellite phone, UFDD leader Gen. Mahamat Nouri, a former defence minister who defected from Deby’s government in May, said his fighters were still inside Chad in the region of Goz Beida.

“There’s no fighting today, we’re OK here,” Nouri said over a faint, crackling line. He added that, besides Sougui, other army officers were killed in heavy government losses.

Chad’s government had said its forces had pushed the rebels over the border into Sudan.

Asked whether the UFDD planned further attacks against Deby’s forces, Nouri replied: “Absolutely. We have our strategy to take on the government forces”.

But Nouri, a former Chadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia who announced his defection days after May 3 polls that returned Deby for a third term, said his forces did not intend to advance on the capital N’Djamena for the moment.

Chad accuses neighbour Sudan of backing the rebels. Khartoum has repeatedly denied such charges.

CONFLICTING CLAIMS

Chad’s defence minister said 100 rebels had been killed in Sunday’s fierce fighting. A UFDD statement published on a Chadian opposition Website put the government losses at 215 dead and said 15 of its own fighters were killed.

There was no independent confirmation of the government and rebel versions of the combat in Chad’s remote eastern scrubland, where both sides use fast-moving columns of pickup trucks, some mounted with machine guns and rocket-launchers.

Three weeks before the May 3 election, another rebel group racing in from the east struck directly at N’Djamena, but was beaten back by government forces.

Since then, Deby’s army has launched several offensives against rebel bands in the east, where the long-running conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur province has pushed both refugees and fighters over the border into Chad.

Deby, a former army chief who seized power in a 1990 revolt, is facing interlinked eastern insurgencies, but the rebels have been weakened by internal divisions and infighting.

Nouri said he had “contacts” with two other rebel groups, the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) and the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD).

Opponents of Deby accuse a French military force stationed in Chad of propping up Deby’s government.

Rebels fired a ground-to-air missile at a French reconnaissance plane early last week, but it missed. French officials insist their forces do not participate in any combat.

“We don’t think the French forces will intervene directly,” UFDD leader Nouri told Reuters.

(Reuters)