Chad says rebels not headed for capital
Nov 26, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Chad denied initial reports by the French embassy of a big column of rebels heading for the capital N’Djamena, saying the city’s population faced no threat.
“I categorically deny reports that an alleged column of rebels is 400 kilometers (250 miles) from N’Djamena,” Chadian Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said, adding the local population “is in no way threatened.”
The French embassy in N’Djamena had suggested otherwise earlier in the day, stating “the presence of a large rebel column has been confirmed in the Bata region of the country, heading west,” and that fighting around the capital over the next 24 hours “cannot be ruled out.”
But the embassy softened its warning in a separate statement later in the day, saying that the column “was no longer progressing.”
“The situation is normal in N’Djamena,” the embassy said.
Nonetheless, substantial numbers of Chadian troops, equipped with vehicles and heavy weapons, were deployed around the capital, a Chadian military official said.
Earlier, a Chadian military source said the rebels were from the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD), which took the towns of Biltine and Am Zoer, close to the border with Sudan, on Saturday.
France provides low-profile military support to President Idriss Deby Itno’s government, which frequently accuses Sudan of backing rebels and on Sunday also blamed Saudi Arabia for the first time.
The rebel column was spotted 400 kilometres east of N’Djamena, the French embassy said in its first statement, but the RAFD said it had sent patrols west of Biltine rather than having a strategy to attack the capital.
Meanwhile, Chadian troops regained control Sunday of the main eastern town Abeche, after a different rebel group, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) led by General Mahamat Nouri, left during the early hours, saying it had taken many prisoners in a battle that killed 140 government soldiers and 22 rebels.
Nouri, a former defence minister under Deby, told AFP by satellite telephone that the aim was “slowly to destroy the enemies’ troops by weakening them”, but not to stay in captured towns.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agency late Saturday said between 50 and 60 wounded people, mostly government troops and rebels, were hospitalised in Abeche, where pillaging broke out.
Nouri said he was aware of looting, including at the UNHCR and World Food Programme depots, but said it was the work of civilians, not his men.
“Our final objective remains the fall of N’Djamena, but without haste,” said Nouri, whose troops entered Chad from western Sudan to take Abeche in the early hours of Saturday, then withdraw in the same way the UFDD briefly captured two other towns, Goz Beida and Am Timan, a month ago.
“In a few days, we will attack again,” Nouri said.
The French military at Camp Croci near Abeche resumed patrols Sunday, while reconnaissance flights continued, according to a general staff source in Paris, who said the 150 troops stationed there stayed on the base during the fighting for Abeche.
The RAFD rebels, led by the twin brothers Tom and Timan Erdimi who were once close to Deby, denied as “inexact” reports that an attack targetting N’Djamena was being mounted, but said patrols were being sent out up to 100 kilometres west of Biltine.
“We still occupy Biltine. We’re shoring up our positions to respond in the event of an army counter-attack,” said the RAFD’s Yaya Dillo Djerou, who told AFP he was speaking for the rebel “military coordination” team.
Patrols were scouting, but “we have not defined a strategy to attack N’Djamena,” he added.
Minister Doumgor, who also serves as government spokesman, accused Saudi Arabia as well as neighbouring Sudan, which denies accusations of backing rebels in Chad, of mounting “a large scale operation to destabilise it”.
“This operation bears the hand of Sudan and Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It’s Sudan and Saudi Arabia that are equipping and training mercenaries, and providing them with the necessary logistics to attack Chad today on several fronts in the east.”
Doumgor said “the international community must be aware” that Chad faced “the kind of war for the promotion of militant Islam preached by Al-Qaeda of Bin Laden, which won’t spare any country in the region.”
He alleged that “60 percent” of Nouri’s men are “young Wahabites between 13 and 17 years old … recruited in the madrassas (Koranic schools) of Jeddah, Mecca and Riyadh”.
(AFP)