Chad slaps curfew on capital
2008-02-07 18:06
N'Djamena - Chad's government slapped a night curfew on N'Djamena and southern provinces on Thursday as rebels who almost ousted President Idriss Deby Itno regrouped and rearmed after battling for the capital.
Deby insists he controls the whole central African country, but a military source said the rebel alliance driven out of N'Djamena after a weekend of heavy fighting had met up with reinforcements about 400km east of N'Djamena.
Prime Minister Delwa Kassire Coumakoye told a cabinet meeting, according to officials, the 18:30 to 06:00 curfew will be applied in N'Djamena and six southern and eastern provinces "for the time it takes to uncover the rampant enemies who are still hidden".
At least 200 pick-up trucks had formed a new column near Mongo, the source said, while a rebel spokesman said the alliance now had fresh supplies of fuel and ammunition, raising fears of a further offensive.
The two days of fierce fighting in N'Djamena left at least 160 dead and hundreds wounded, said the Chadian Red Cross.
Major damage was done to the city in clashes involving tanks and military aircraft as well as the fighters on heavily armed vehicles.
Deby, who accuses Sudan's government of backing rebels operating out of bases in the west of the neighbouring country, himself said on Thursday that Khartoum would "start again" and blamed the "African Union burying its head in the sand" for giving "Sudan a sort of green light to destabilise Chad."
Appeal to EU, France
He called for the rapid deployment of European Union troops in Chad and the Central African Republic, with their mandate to protect Sudanese refugees from Darfur and local people displaced by internal strife.
"I'm making a solemn appeal to the European Union and the initiator of this idea, France, to make sure that this force is installed as swiftly as possible to ease the burden we have to bear today," Deby told French radio Europe 1.
He acknowledged gratitude to former colonial power France, saying its troops already in Chad had not "acted directly on the ground beside the Chadian army", but French intelligence was "very important and useful for the actions we had to take".
The rebels condemned France, which sent Defence Minister Herve Morin to N'Djamena in a brief visit of support on Wednesday, for a "heavy responsibility in siding with the dictatorial, repressive, corrupt, mafia-like and illegal regime and manipulating the (United Nations) Security Council to justify armed intervention".
After the rebels launched their offensive out of Sudan on January 28, France boosted its permanent force in Chad to 1 450 troops, and drafted a non-binding Security Council resolution opening the way to military action if requested. It was unanimously passed on Monday.
French reconnaissance planes already monitor the desert and Sudanese border.
Rebel leaders Mahamat Nouri, Timane Erdimi and Adbelwahid Aboud Makaye joined forces in December after a peace pact with Deby collapsed.
Want deployments soon
Eufor spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe de Cussac said on Thursday that deployment depended on the situation in N'Djamena and, in particular, its airport, which was the only place where French troops returned fire from the Chadian rebels.
"We are working as hard as we can to relaunch the deployments as soon as possible, at the beginning of the week," said De Cussac from the EUFOR Chad-CAR headquarters outside Paris.
Force commanders want the mission of 3 700 troops to be initially ready in March and fully up and running in May, with troops drawn from 14 nations, and France providing more than 2 000 personnel.