Chad rebels say open new battlefront in northeast

Jan 13, 2007 (DAKAR) — A Chadian rebel group said on Saturday its fighters had seized a town in the country’s remote northeast in an effort to open a new front in their fight against President Idriss Deby’s government.

“This morning two columns of the Union Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) carried out attacks … They were able to dislodge government forces and they now occupy the town of Ounianga Kebir,” rebel spokesman Makaila Nguebla said.

French radio quoted Chad’s information minister as saying the attack had just been an incursion and that the rebels had since retreated to the Sudanese border.

Ounianga Kebir lies in the Sahara desert in Chad’s far northeast, roughly equidistant from the Sudanese and Libyan borders. Previous rebel attacks have largely targeted towns much further south near the Sudan border.

“We have been obliged to open several fronts … It is a military strategy, we are trying to generalise the conflict across the national territory so as to stretch the government forces,” Nguebla said.

Nguebla, based in Senegal’s capital Dakar, said rebel commanders in Chad had told him by satellite phone that they planned to carry out more attacks in the coming days. He said the two columns numbered around 80 fighters in all.

It was not immediately possible to obtain independent confirmation of the rebel claims.

Several rebel groups bent on overthrowing Deby have been fighting a low-intensity war in the desert, mountains and scrub of eastern Chad, occasionally striking further west, including a lightning assault on the capital N’Djamena last April.

Their campaign intensified late last year, with fighters attacking and briefly occupying several eastern towns, piling pressure on Deby’s forces.

Deby accuses Sudan of backing and arming the rebels as well as Arab Janjaweed militia from Sudan’s Darfur region who have mounted cross-border attacks.

Khartoum denies the charges and in turn accuses Chad of backing anti-government insurgents in Darfur, where tens of thousands have been killed in political and ethnic conflict since 2003.

The Chadian rebels’ April attack on N’Djamena was repulsed by the army just weeks before a presidential election which returned Deby for a fresh term in office.

He has ruled the landlocked central African oil producer since seizing power through a revolt from the east in 1990.

(Reuters)