Reprieve in Chad Gives Thousands a Chance to Flee

Rebels Retreat to East; Aid Workers Warn of Crisis in Capital, Camps

JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 4 -- Thousands of residents poured out of N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, on Monday as clashes between rebel and government forces cooled after two days of combat, according to reports from the besieged city.

Though scattered fighting continued Monday, rebel forces broke off their attack on the palace of President Idriss Déby and retreated to positions east of N'Djamena as civilians fled westward, across a bridge into neighboring Cameroon. Humanitarian groups began moving workers and resources toward the border to help the fleeing civilians.

The pause in the fighting came as the U.N. Security Council condemned the attacks, potentially opening the way for France, which has 1,800 troops in Chad but is officially neutral, to side openly with Déby in his struggle to assert control in the former French colony.

Aid agencies warned of possible disaster in the capital and the refugee camps along the nation's eastern border. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Darfur conflict in neighboring Sudan depend on aid flowing through Chad, an oil-rich but impoverished country with a history of severe corruption and political instability.

The scale of casualties in N'Djamena was not clear. Reports from the scene described streets with unrecovered bodies and burned-out vehicles.

"We have a lot of injured and dead people in town," said Christophe Droeven, Chad representative for the aid group Catholic Relief Services. He spoke from Belgium, to which he was evacuated over the weekend, but has kept in close contact with staff members in Chad.

Rebel leaders told news organizations that they were pulling back from the capital to allow civilians to leave safely, but the move was widely seen as a victory for Déby, the French-trained fighter pilot who has ruled Chad since 1990. He has survived numerous attempts to unseat him in recent years, including a similar assault on the capital in 2006.

"As of now the Chadian government is patrolling the capital very aggressively, and the rebels are not even in the city," said David Buchbinder, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who specializes in Chad.

The attack on N'Djamena began Saturday after the rebels moved swiftly through Chad's eastern desert region on hundreds of pickup trucks mounted with machine guns. The government contends the rebels are supported by Sudan; the rebels depict themselves as fighting to overthrow a brutal dictatorship.

Once in the city, they turned their guns on Déby's presidential palace.

The government counterattack, bolstered by helicopter gunships, gathered strength on Sunday. Chadian government officials portrayed Monday's events as a potential turning point. "The whole of N'Djamena is under control and the savage mercenaries are routed," Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir told Radio France Internationale.

John Prendergast, an Africa analyst with the Enough Project, an anti-genocide activist group, said that government forces had "pushed them back. Déby's in a much stronger position than he appeared to be just 24 hours ago."