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Troops patrol Chad capital after deadly battle with rebels
AFP
N'DJAMENA
Petroleumworld.com 04 14 06Chadian troops patrolled the capital N'Djamena Friday a day after deadly clashes with rebel forces, as the government said 150 people died in another battle near the Sudanese border.
Forces loyal to President Idriss Deby, identifiable by their red ribbons, were deployed in various parts of the city, in particular around the presidential palace, but the number of military vehicles deployed was smaller than the day before.
Businesses were open and taxis running as normal, an AFP correspondent said.
The authorities said that they had repelled an assault Thursday by rebels on the outskirts of the capital and also claimed to be in control of the town of Adre in the east of the country near the border with Sudan where, according to humanitarian sources, fighting had ended Thursday evening.
The rebel offensive has triggered alarm in the international community and comes just weeks ahead of presidential elections in the oil-rich but impoverished state in sub-Saharan Africa.
Deby is seeking re-election for a third term in the May 3 polls, but major opposition parties have pledged to boycott the vote, claiming they will be neither fair or transparent.
The president recently survived an assassination and coup attempt, and has suffered desertions and defections from his entourage since the end of 2005.
"There are more than 200 injured, several dead, 200 prisoners, it's over, they have been dealt with," Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah told Radio France Internationale (RFI) Friday, referring to the assault on N'Djamena.
"At Adre (near the Sudanese border), there were attacks which were repulsed into the Sudanese interior. There were 150 victims," the minister told RFI, without saying whether civilians were among the dead.
"At his point they (the rebels) are in Sudan," he said.
Humanitarian sources said the fighting in N'Djamena had left several people dead and at least 250 injured while the clashes in Adre took five lives and resulted in 60 injured.
Chad has accused neighboring Sudan of engineering the offensive by rebels of the United Front for Change (FUC), though this has been denied by Khartoum.
The UN Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned the rebel offensive and urged Khartoum and N'Djamena not to conduct hostile activities against each other.
At the initiative of Congo, which currently holds the African Union (AU) presidency, the 15-member Security Council discussed developments in Chad, which borders Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, and received a briefing from an official of the UN Secretariat.
Council members "condemn any attempt to seize power by force . . . and calls on the rebels to put an end to violence and to participate in the democratic process," said China's UN envoy Wang Guangya, who chairs the presidency of the council for April.
The members urged the Chadian and Sudanese governments to abide by a February 8 accord under in which they agreed not to shelter rebels on their respective territory and not to conduct hostile activities against each other.
AFP 04 14 06 1031 GMTCopyright © 1994-2006 Agence France-Presse. All Rights Reserved.
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