By Alistair Thomson

N'DJAMENA, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Chad's rebels said on Sunday they had occupied an eastern town after clashes with the army and mercenaries from neighbouring Sudan and said they were still in control of the centre of the landlocked country.

Ali Ordjo Hemchi, a spokesman for the coalition of three rebel groups which launched a failed assault on N'Djamena a week ago, said the rebels had taken the town of Am Timan, some 600 km (373 miles) east of the capital, after a brief battle.

It was not immediately possible to get any independent confirmation of fighting in Am Timan on Sunday.

"One of our columns has liberated Am Timan in the southeast of Chad. We have taken a significant quantity of arms and ammunition," Hemchi told Reuters by satellite phone.

"There was not much resistance," he said, adding the fighting did not last more than half an hour.

Hemchi said Sudanese mercenaries had been fighting alongside Chadian soldiers and said French warplanes flew over the rebel positions after Am Timan had fallen, but did not open fire.

President Idriss Deby's government says it routed the rebel column which entered N'Djamena last week using tanks and helicopters in two days of confused street fighting.

The insurgents say they withdrew to regroup.

Hemchi said there were a total of seven rebel columns. He said the rebels were now surrounding the central towns of Mongo and Bitkine, which they claimed to have taken on Saturday, but that there had been no fresh fighting in either location.

The rebels, who denounce Deby's 18-year rule in the central African oil producer as corrupt and dictatorial, accuse France of military intervention to keep the French-trained helicopter pilot in power.

Paris denies this, saying it provided Deby with logistical support while concentrating on evacuating more than 700 foreign nationals from N'Djamena.

Aid workers say at least 160 civilians were killed in the assault, the second by the rebel coalition on the capital in less than two years, while tens of thousands of Chadians fled into neighbouring Cameroon.

The authorities have relaxed a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed on the capital on Thursday so that it now runs from midnight to 6:00 in the morning. But the city remains tense, with soldiers constantly patrolling in machinegun-mounted pick-up trucks. (Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Dakar; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Myra MacDonald)

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