Chad rebels attack border town, gov’t blames Sudan

Feb 1, 2007 (N’DJAMENA) — Rebels fighting to overthrow Chad’s President Idriss Deby attacked the eastern town of Adre on the border with Darfur on Thursday and the Chadian government said the raiders came from neighbouring Sudan.

Officials in N’Djamena said Chad’s army had beaten off the attack and pushed the raiders back into Darfur, the western Sudanese region where a long-running political and ethnic conflict has been increasingly spilling over into Chad.

But a rebel spokesman said fighting was continuing at Adre, which straddles the main road from Chad to Sudan and is only 30 km (19 miles) from the West Darfur capital of el-Geneina.

“The mercenaries from Sudan attacked Chad National Army positions in Adre. They have been completely defeated and we are in pursuit,” Chad’s government said in a statement read by Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor.

Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah blamed Sudan for the assault. “When someone attacks Adre, where do they attack from? Adre is 400 metres (yards) from Sudan, so do you think the attack came from Sudan or from Chad?,” he told Reuters.

Deby’s government repeatedly accuses Sudan of backing the rebels, including by allowing them to strike from Sudanese territory, as part of a widening campaign of regional destabilisation, a charge denied by Khartoum.

The border fighting, part of a wave of Darfur-linked violence that has engulfed eastern Chad in recent months, killings hundreds of people, was certain to strain already tense ties between Chad and its eastern neighbour Sudan.

Djadallah said the Chadian army was in control of Adre, which lies 167 km (104 miles) east of Abeche, the hub for international humanitarian operations serving tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced civilians in eastern Chad.

But a spokesman for the rebel Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), part of a coalition of rebel groups battling to oust Deby, gave a different version.

“The fighting was very violent … it is continuing on the outskirts, but the centre of Adre has been under our control for the past half hour,” Ali Moussa Izzo told Reuters by satellite phone.

There was no immediate independent confirmation of who was in control of Adre.

HIT-AND-RUN

In recent months, the rebels have launched a spate of hit-and-run attacks against Chad government forces in the east in a campaign aimed at trying to end Deby’s 17-year rule in the landlocked central African oil producer.

“Our strategy is to destroy the Chadian army little by little,” the UFDD’s Izzo said.

The latest fighting in eastern Chad came as a U.N. assessment team continued a mission to this violence-hit area of Africa to evaluate whether to deploy international peacekeepers along the Chadian border with Sudan.

The team, sent by the U.N. Security Council, visited Chad last week and is currently in nearby Central African Republic, which has also blamed Sudan for rebel raids on its northeast.

Defying the U.N. and intense international pressure, Sudan is refusing to allow a strong force of U.N. peacekeepers to be deployed in Darfur.

So the world body is also looking to send troops to Chad and Central African Republic to secure their porous frontiers with Darfur, although some U.N. officials say this will not be effective unless domestic insurgencies are also resolved.

(Reuters)