By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press 

NAIROBI, Kenya - Tanks rolled through Chad's capital on Sunday, turning the  
streets into a battle zone between the government and rebels littered with  
bodies. Fighting also raged in an area where some 420,000 refugees live near the 
 border with Darfur. 

Chad and its former colonizer, France, accused Sudan  of masterminding the 
coup attempt in the oil-rich Central African nation. Sudan  has repeatedly 
denied any involvement in the fighting.
Hundreds of rebels  penetrated the capital of Chad on Saturday. The violence 
has endangered a $300  million global aid operation supporting millions of 
people in Chad, a country  about three times the size of California. It also has 
delayed the deployment of  a European Union peacekeeping mission to both Chad 
and neighboring Central  African Republic.
 
France accused Sudan of wanting to crush President Idriss Deby's regime  
ahead of the arrival of the EU force, which is to operate along the volatile  
border with Darfur.
The force was to be based in the area of the key eastern  town of Adre, which 
rebels said they seized on Sunday. The government said it  had repelled the 
attack. Adre, near the border with Darfur, is a humanitarian  hub surrounded by 
camps with some 420,000 refugees from Darfur and Chadians  displaced in the 
spillover from the violence.

Chadian Gen. Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour alleged that Sudanese troops were  
involved and called it a "declaration of war" from Sudan.
"Sudan does not  want this force because it would open a window on the 
genocide in Darfur,"  Chad's Foreign Minister Amad Allam-Mi said on Radio France 
Internationale.
In  a statement Sunday, Sudan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadeq said 
"we  would like to stress that Sudan does not provide any assistance to any 
side" in  Chad.
"Any developments in Chad reflect on Sudan and any instability there  would 
have a negative impact on Sudan," he said.

The U.S. Embassy in N'Djamena said Sunday it was temporarily closing and  
relocating all of its operations and remaining staff to the airport. It had  
authorized the departure of its nonessential staff. The United Nations also said  
it was temporarily evacuating its staff.

French soldiers in N'Djamena began evacuating foreigners on Saturday night,  
and nearly 400 had left by midday Sunday, said a French military spokesman,  
Capt. Christophe Prazuck.
One foreign aid worker described the scene in  N'Djamena on Sunday 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 reported they 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.

Hundreds of people are fleeing the fighting, crossing the Chari River to  
Kousseri, in neighboring Cameroon. Helene Caux with the U.N. refugee agency said  
at least 400 had crossed and "people are still coming." She said her agency  
needed to confirm the refugees were civilians with no fighters among  them.
The rebels arrived Friday on the capital's outskirts in about 250  pickup 
trucks mounted with machine guns after a three-day push across the desert  from 
Chad's eastern border with Sudan. The entered the city early Saturday,  quickly 
spreading through the streets.

The fighting resumed around dawn Sunday, a French military spokesman said,  
and government forces were using tanks and helicopter gunships to try to repel  
the rebels, who were battling back with assault weapons, rocket-propelled  
grenades and machine guns.

Several international workers in the Darfur town of el-Geneina in Sudan  
confirmed that Chadian rebels had left their nearby bases in recent days and  were 
reported to have crossed into Chad. They spoke on condition of anonymity  
because of the sensitivity of the issue.
French and U.S. statements  condemning the coup attempt have referred to the 
rebels coming from outside the  country. 

Rebel spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah claimed Deby was trapped at his  
presidential palace, surrounded by tanks and armored vehicles, and that they  
controlled the rest of the city after two days of fierce fighting. 
"Nobody  can say who will win," said Prazuck, the French military spokesman. 
France  offered to whisk Deby out of Chad, Defense Minister Herve Morin said 
Sunday.  Deby apparently refused to flee. 

Chad has been convulsed by civil wars and invasions since independence from  
France in 1960. The recent discovery of oil has only increased the intensity 
of  the power struggles in the largely desert country, and another Chadian 
rebel  group launched a failed assault on N'Djamena in 2006. 

The rebels currently fighting in the city are a coalition of three groups.  
The biggest is led by Mahamat Nouri, a former diplomat who defected 16 months  
ago. They others are led Timan Erdimi, a nephew of Deby who was his chief of  
staff and the third is a breakaway from Nouri's group headed by Adelwahid 
Aboud.  They have long been fighting to overthrow Deby, whom they accuse of 
corruption.  

The rebels are also angry with the president for not providing what they  
consider enough support to insurgents in Sudan's Darfur region, some of whom are  
from Deby's own tribe, the Zaghawa, who are found in both Chad and Sudan.  

Deby, who came to power at the head of a rebellion in 1990, has won  
elections since, but none deemed free or fair. He brought a semblance of peace  after 
three decades of civil war and an invasion by Libya, but became  increasingly 
isolated. 

The most recent rebellions in Chad began in 2005 in the east, erupting at  
the same time as Darfur conflict in Sudan. More than 200,000 people have died in 
 five years of fighting between ethnic African tribes and Sudanese government 
 forces and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes. 
___ 
Associated  Press writers Angela Doland in Paris, Alexander G. Higgins in 
Geneva, Alfred de  Montesquiou in Khartoum, Sudan and Matthew Rosenberg in 
Nairobi contributed to  this report.
 



**************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.     
(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025
48)

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤