Fighting triggered by a rebel assault on Chad’s capital, Ndjamena, last month killed about 700 people, President Idriss Déby Itno said in comments broadcast on Thursday.
Déby had said 400 civilians were killed in Ndjamena during the fighting a month ago. He told French television station France 24 the new figure included soldiers and those killed in the nearby town of Massaguet.
”The total death toll is about 700, including Ndjamena and Massaguet, the town 80km east of Ndjamena. Those were the two martyrs’ towns,” he said, according to an advance copy of the interview.
Rebels opposed to Déby attacked Ndjamena on February 2 and besieged his presidential palace. Government forces pushed the insurgents back after two days of heavy fighting.
Déby has fought off several rebel bids to end his 18-year rule in the Central African oil producer and has repeatedly blamed the President of neighbouring Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for backing the rebel offensives.
Déby, interviewed in his palace in Ndjamena, said he believed Khartoum was re-arming the rebels for another attack.
”It is not impossible, and I will even confirm that Sudan is equipping those [insurgents] who left here, with new weapons, new means to prepare for attacks,” he said.
”It’s not the rebellion that wants to overthrow President Déby. On the contrary, it’s Sudan that wants to install a regime devoted to it so it can propagate in sub-Saharan Africa a form of Islamism, because the system in Sudan is pure Islamism.”
Déby said he had not yet decided whether to pardon six French aid workers jailed for eight years for trying to fly 103 African children to Europe without permission.
The members of charity Zoe’s Ark were jailed in Chad in December but later transferred to a French prison. Their lawyers last month requested a presidential pardon from Déby.
”We have not yet decided … We have judicial procedures here,” Déby said. If due process were followed, he would in theory be prepared to issue a pardon, he said. — Reuters