Rebels attack Chad president’s palace
Published 10:35 pm Saturday, February 2, 2008
NAIROBI, Kenya — Hundreds of rebels charged into Chad’s capital aboard pickup trucks Saturday, clashing with government troops around the presidential palace in the most forceful attempt yet to oust President Idriss Deby.
The violence endangered a $300 million global aid operation supporting millions of people in the former French colony and also delayed the deployment of the European Union’s peacekeeping mission to both Chad and neighboring Central African Republic.
Libya’s official news agency, JANA, reported that Chadian rebel leader Mahamat Nouri agreed to a cease-fire Saturday night after speaking to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was appointed by the African Union to mediate in the crisis.
Rebel spokesman Mahamat Hassane Boulmaye said he had not heard of any cease-fire and did not believe Nouri would agree to an unconditional end to hostilities. “The fighters would rebel,” Boulmaye told The Associated in an early morning telephone call today. Boulmaye said he was speaking from the border with Sudan and had not spoken to Nouri since Saturday afternoon.
The rebels arrived after a three-day push across the desert from the eastern border with Sudan in about 250 pickups with mounted submachine guns.
The rebels gathered outside N’Djamena overnight before 1,000 to 1,500 fighters entered early Saturday and spread through the city, said Col. Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman.
Government forces were pushing rebels away from N’Djamena, he said late Saturday. “It appears clear that President Deby succeeded in containing them at his palace and is even in the process of pushing them back,” Burkhard said.
A bomb hit the residence of the Saudi ambassador to Chad, killing the wife and daughter of an embassy staffer taking shelter from the fighting, according to a Saudi Foreign Ministry statement.
Chad’s ambassador in Ethiopia, Cherif Mahamat Zene, said “the situation is under control.
“The head of state is fine in his palace. It’s true that there are some rebels who have entered the city, but to say the city has fallen is false.” Zene said his information came from a telephone call with the defense minister in N’Djamena.
Boulmaye said earlier that rebel had surrounded the presidential palace and claimed government soldiers were defecting.
“Many in the military have rallied with the rebels,” said Boulmaye, whose Union of Forces for Democracy and Development is the biggest rebel group.
Chad, a French colony until 1960, has been convulsed by civil wars and invasions since independence, and the recent discovery of oil has only increased the intensity of the struggle for power in the largely desert country about three times the size of California.
In April 2006, one Chadian rebel group launched a failed assault on N’Djamena.
The rebel force is believed to be a coalition of three groups, including the biggest led by Nouri, a former diplomat who defected 16 months ago, and a nephew of Deby’s, Timan Erdimi. They long have been fighting to overthrow Deby, whom they accuse of corruption. Deby, himself a soldier, has suffered many defections in the past and morale is low in the army.
The rebels also have said they were unhappy with the president not providing enough support to rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region, some of whom are from Deby’s own tribe, the Zaghawa.
The African Union, holding a summit in Ethiopia, said it would not recognize the rebels should they seize power. Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, new head of the 52-nation bloc, said leaders had selected Gadhafi and Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso to try to broker peace.
France said it “firmly condemns the attempt to take power by force.”
