African Union mediators head to Chad, French military prepared to intervene

African were expected yesterday in the oil-rich capital N'Djamena from where tens of thousands of people have fled as rebels renewed their most forceful attempt yet to oust Chadian President Idriss Deby.

The fighting in N'Djamena threatened to further destabilize an already violent swath of Africa that is home to hundreds of thousands of refugees and borders Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region.

Hours the rebels went back on the attack on Monday, the UN Security Council authorized France and other nations to help Chad's government. France has 1,800 soldiers backed by fighter jets in its former colony.

France ready to launch a military operation in Chad against rebels there if necessary, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday.

"If France must do its duty, it will do so," Sarkozy said in response to a question on a possible military operation in Chad. "Let no one doubt it."

Sarkozy French troops have taken no part in the fighting -- except last Friday night, when they opened fire to protect French civilians. He said that was a case of self-defense.

Sarkozy as "absolutely not exact" rebel claims that French forces had killed civilians.

However, Sarkozy insisted it would be better to "leave Chad alone."

"If Chad were a victim of an aggression, France would have -- and I stress the conditional tense -- the means to resist this action," he said.

High-level and diplomats from the Republic of Congo and Libya were to arrive yesterday on an African Union mediation mission, the republic's Foreign Affairs Minister Basile Ikouebe said on Monday in Brazzaville. They would meet with both sides, and France had agreed to protect the mediators, he said.

There were fears of a wider regional conflict. Chadian officials have repeatedly accused Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir of supporting the rebels, and even deploying Sudanese troops in rebel offensives in eastern Chad.

"We are in direct war with Omar Bashir," General Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour said yesterday on Radio France Internationale. "It is Omar al-Bashir who wants to destabilize and Balkanize Chad."

The US asked Sudan to halt any possible aid to the rebels and use its influence "to tell them to withdraw," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Monday.

"We have gone in at very high levels of the Sudanese government to say that if there is any support from the Sudanese government to these rebels that that should end immediately," he said.

Ikouebe said the mediators also would be talking to Sudan.

"If any state were suspected of implication in the Chad crisis, we would have words with that state," he said.

The fighting in N'Djamena was believed to have taken a heavy toll. Bodies lay on the streets and the hulks of burned out tanks and other vehicles stood abandoned.

The death toll was not known, but "probably many people were injured or killed," said a French military spokesman, Captain Christophe Prazuck.

"The fighting was heavy, the weapons used were heavy," he said.

Isabelle Defourny, head of Chad operations for the French organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said hundreds of people had been reported wounded.

She said fighting made it difficult to reach the wounded, but the group's doctors had treated about 70 wounded people since Saturday.