Rebels in Chad seeking to overthrow President Idriss Deby battled their way into the capital N'Djamena today and said they were securing it, but a minister said government forces still controlled the city.
Rebels seeking to overthrow President Idriss Deby
The renewed fighting has prompted the EU to postpone the deployment of advance units of its peacekeeping mission to Chad.
A spokesman for Lt-Gen Pat Nash, the Irish commander of the mission, said last night that the deployment had been suspended for now.
"The deployment is postponed until the security situation stabilises," Cmdt Dan Harvey said, adding that all EU military personnel already in Chad, including eight Irish nationals, were safe.
Meanwhile residents and diplomats said rebel fighters had entered the capital, but the situation remained confused. Machine gun and heavy weapons fire, sometimes sporadic, sometimes more intense, could be heard as France prepared to evacuate French and other foreign nationals.
"We are in the process of securing the city," Abderamane Koullamalah, a spokesman for the unified rebel command, told Radio France International (RFI), saying he was speaking by phone from N'Djamena. A Chadian opposition Website, Alwihda, said the capital had fallen to the insurgents.
But a Chadian government minister of state, Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, denied this. "Chad's defence and security forces are in control in the capital," he told RFI. He said government troops were pursuing rebel units. Abdallah Nassour said he was speaking from the Chadian presidency where he said Mr Deby was directing operations.
Fighting took place around the presidential palace and parliament after the rebels, in trucks mounted with machine guns and other weapons, fought into the city. They had met little resistance as they advanced across the central African oil producer.
Radio France International said rebel fighters, some wearing white or yellow armbands, were seen all around the dusty city on the banks of the Chari river. Some looting had broken out. African Union leaders attending a summit in Ethiopia condemned the rebels' entry into N'Djamena and threatened to kick them out of the 53-nation body if they took power. "If the rebellion succeeds, certainly we will excommunicate them from the African Union," AU Chairman Jakaya Kikwete told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi condemned the Chadian rebel assault as "a great violation". Earlier today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the situation in Chad with Mr Deby in a telephone conversion, Mr Sarkozy's office said.
54 Irish troops were due to be deployed in the central African country to make up the first batch of 450 Irish military personnel embarking on peacekeeping and refugee-protection duties in Chad. The troops were diverted back to McKee Barracks yesterday while they were en route to Dublin airport.
The UN is pulling non-essential expatriate staff out of the city and France is flying in 150 extra troops to protect French nationals there.
In N'Djamena, French troops stationed in the former French colony protected 700 French and other foreign nationals who had grouped in three designated secure sites, including a hotel.
France's Foreign Ministry said preparations were underway to evacuate those who wished to leave later in the day. The rebels entered the city after pushing forward from the northeast, where they had fought confused battles with Mr Deby's troops yesterday. The fighting delayed the imminent deployment of a European Union peacekeeping force to eastern Chad. "Rebels are headed for the palace and are about two blocks from here.
The rebels are winning," one foreign resident said in an email sent from the compound of a western embassy. Rebel fighters from several groups united in an anti-Deby alliance for their most determined offensive in two years. The French and U.S. embassies had started grouping their nationals for evacuation.
But after the rebels entered the city, the French mission told its citizens to stay at home, under cover, and keep away from windows. Alwihda Website said earlier that civilians were fleeing the capital southwards towards the border with Cameroon.
Chad says the rebels, who advanced rapidly this week across the country from the eastern border with Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, are armed and backed by the Sudanese government. Khartoum routinely denies such accusations. Deby himself seized power in a revolt from the east in 1990. He won elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006.
Government forces repelled a rebel attack on the capital in 2006, when hundreds of people are thought to have been killed. Mr Deby's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-mi accused Sudan's government of launching the latest Chadian rebel offensive in a bid to block the deployment in eastern Chad of the EU peacekeeping force, which has a United Nations mandate to protect thousands of refugees from the conflict in Darfur.
International experts say some 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have been uprooted from their homes. Khartoum says the West is exaggerating the conflict. Chadian officials say Sudan has repeatedly backed offensives by several Chadian rebel groups. Khartoum accuses Chad in turn of backing Sudanese insurgents in Darfur.