Chad says killed rebel chiefs, tension remains high
Source: Reuters
By Betel Miarom and Stephanie Hancock HADJER MARFAINE, Chad, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Chad's army said on Friday it killed two rebel military chiefs as it swept their fighters back into neighbouring Sudan this week, but the insurgents denied this and said they remained on Chadian soil. Chad's army was on high alert in the desolate east of the landlocked central African state even though Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said the heavy clashes three days ago had routed the rebels and ended fighting in the region. Burned-out pick-up trucks littered with charred munitions and guns were still strewn across the battlefield at Hadjer Marfaine, a mountainous area close to the Sudanese border. President Idriss Deby's government said it had killed 700 rebels, including the military heads of the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) and the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy (SCUD), which it says are backed by Khartoum. However, hundreds of heavily armed Chadian soldiers -- wearing red ribbons to distinguish them from rebels -- produced only one corpse for journalists. The remaining bodies, they said, were in Sudanese territory. The deputy chief of Chad's army, Kalimi Mahamat, identified the corpse as Seby Aguid, a former senior army general related to Deby who defected in February to lead the SCUD rebels. The corpse's face was covered with a blanket as the victim had apparently been shot in the head. The body was identifiable only by the missing hand, which Aguid was reputed to have lost long ago in combat. A SCUD spokesman, contacted by satellite telephone, denied the group's military leader had been killed. "This is just a tactic by the government to try to raise the morale of their troops," Yaya Dillo Djerou told Reuters, saying SCUD fighters had attacked government forces from the rear as they were pursuing UFDD vehicles toward the border. "We are still in the Chadian military zone ... our troops are on Chadian soil," he added. LOW INTENSITY WAR Over the last year, several rebel groups dedicated to toppling Deby have fought a low-intensity war in the desert, mountains and scrubland of eastern Chad, occasionally advancing further west. In April, rebels reached N'Djamena -- the westerly capital of the oil-producing nation -- but were defeated after hundreds of people were killed in fighting. Former fighter pilot Deby, who seized power in 1990 in an uprising from the east, says rebels and Arab militia are spilling from Sudan's western Darfur region to destabilise the whole of central Africa. Khartoum denies this. Deby, who has moved to the east to personally take charge of military operations, inspected more than 20 captured rebel pick-up trucks used for lightning raids across the barren terrain. "Do you think Chadians could purchase these vehicles which must cost at least 30 million CFA francs ($60,460)?" he asked. Foreign diplomats, meanwhile, have dismissed the government's claims of victory in the recent clashes. "I think it was pretty even," said one diplomat, who asked not to be identified, adding that government forces were better able to sustain the losses. "The rebels are regrouping and licking their wounds."
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