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Rebel forces pull back in Chad

French nationals evacuated from N'Djamena, Chad, wait at the De Gaulle camp in Libreville, Gabon, on Sunday. A French military plane with 202 foreigners evacuated from Chad on board took off from Libreville for Paris, military officials in the French capital said. PHOTO: AFP

Chadian rebels said yesterday they withdrew voluntarily from Chad's capital overnight, but it was unclear if they succumbed to the force of helicopter gunships and tanks deployed by government forces.

Dozens of civilians have been wounded in fighting that began when rebels trying to oust Chadian President Idriss Deby entered the capital on Saturday. The violence threatens peacekeeping and aid operations intended to stabilize a region that borders the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan.

Rebel spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said they "decided to retreat to give the population a chance to get out."

A hotel operator at the Meridien hotel said soldiers were patrolling the streets.

The UN Security Council met for emergency consultations on the situation on Sunday but failed to come to an agreement on a draft statement backing the Chadian government. The council was to meet again yesterday to resume work on a statement on Chad.

A statement from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "profoundly alarmed" by the fighting in N'Djamena.

The African Union said Libya's leader and the Congo Republic president had been asked to monitor the situation in Chad.

Resolutions at the UN or the African Union could alter the mission of French troops in Chad, France's foreign minister said yesterday as a first planeload of evacuees landed at a Paris airport.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Defense Minister Herve Morin said French forces secured Chad's airbases and were protecting French and foreign civilians, but had so far been been neutral in battles between rebels and government troops.

Kouchner said the French army had rescued some civilians holed up in the US embassy, and some 40 others who had been calling for help from the German embassy for more than 24 hours.

"They were under bombardment, it took a real military commando operation, wonderfully executed by France, to get them out," he told reporters.

The US embassy sustained indirect fire, but there were no reports of casualties, a US State Department spokesman said.

An aide to French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Sudan wanted to crush Deby's regime before the arrival of a EU peacekeeping force, which is to operate along the volatile border with Darfur.

The force was to be based in the area of the key eastern town of Adre, which rebels said they seized on Sunday. The government said it repulsed the attack. Adre, near the Darfur border, is a humanitarian hub surrounded by camps with about 420,000 refugees from Darfur and Chadians displaced in the spillover from the violence.

Chadian General Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour charged Sudanese troops were involved and called it a "declaration of war" from Sudan.

Chadian Foreign Minister Amad Allam-Mi said on Radio France Internationale that "Sudan does not want this force because it would open a window on the genocide in Darfur.''

"Why did the intervention happen now?" Sarkozy's top aide, Claude Gueant, asked on Europe-1 radio. "It was the last moment -- before the arrival of EUFOR, which was starting to be put in place -- for Sudan to reach its goal, to try to liquidate the regime of Idriss Deby."

Sudan has repeatedly denied any involvement.

"We would like to stress that Sudan does not provide any assistance to any side" in Chad, Sudan's foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadeq said in a statement on Sunday. "Any developments in Chad reflect on Sudan and any instability there would have a negative impact on Sudan."

A foreign aid worker described the scene in N'Djamena as "bloody and chaotic" with bodies littering the streets and looters breaking into shops during lulls in the fighting.

Gunfire could be heard coming from the area around the presidential palace, said the aid worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with reporters.

The death toll from the fighting was not known. But the French organization Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors without Borders), said it had operated on about 50 wounded people, only one a combatant, since Saturday at a hospital in the capital.

A spokesman in Paris said the Chadian Red Cross had told MSF doctors that they had counted about 200 wounded. The civilians had been hit by stray bullets, MSF said.
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