Chadian rebels attacked the eastern regional capital of Abeche on Saturday in their latest strike against President Idriss Déby Itno’s rule, but government forces said they had withdrawn and surrounded the town.
Chad’s chief of staff said in a statement it had pulled troops back from Abeche, which is located 160km from the border with Sudan, to prevent civilian casualties after the early-morning attack by several armed convoys.
The town lies on the main road to the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, about 600km to the west. Hundreds of people were killed in April when rebel columns reached Ndjamena after a lighting raid across the arid Central African oil producer.
Chad repeated its accusations that Khartoum supports the rebels, who have carried out a number of attacks on the violence-torn east in recent months.
”The town of Abeche had been attacked by mercenaries in the pay of Khartoum,” read a statement signed by General Adoum Gabgalia, deputy head of the chiefs of staff. ”In order to spare civilian lives, the Chadian armed forces have deployed all around the town of Abeche.”
A stream of wounded troops, from both government and rebel forces, began arriving at hospitals in the dusty town and looters took to the streets, ransacking shops after the government troops pulled out, diplomats and aid workers said.
Aid workers in Abeche had been woken by the sound of intense automatic rifle fire and heavier weapons coming from the outskirts of the town. This lasted for about an hour.
”The situation is currently calm. The rebels remain in town,” Claire Bourgeois, head of the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in eastern Chad, told France’s RFI radio. ”Humanitarian workers are not in danger.”
French forces
The French military, which has forces stationed in Abeche under a defence cooperation accord with the government, was bringing its citizens to its base, diplomats said. ”The French have secured the air base and all flights have been grounded,” said one foreign diplomat, adding the Chadian army barracks had been plundered.
Diplomats said the Chadian military appeared to have pulled back toward Oum-Hadjer, about 120km on the road toward Ndjamena.
Chad’s Defence Minister, Bichara Issa Djadallah, had earlier told Reuters that reinforcements were heading toward Abeche.
Diplomats said they believed the latest attack from the east was being carried out by rebels of the anti-Déby Itno coalition, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development.
Eastern Chad, where the UNHCR runs camps for thousands of refugees from Sudan’s Darfur and for displaced Chadians, has descended into lawlessness due to frequent rebel attacks and incursions by Janjaweed militia from across the border.
France, which stations some Mirage fighters at its Abeche base, has in the past backed the Déby Itno government against the rebels with logistics and intelligence support.
Sudan denies aiding the rebels but Chad’s government accuses its eastern neighbour of waging a regional war of destabilisation from Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in ethnic and political fighting since 2003. — Reuters
Additional reporting by Stephanie Hancock in Ndjamena and Pascal Fletcher in Dakar