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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