By Betel Miarom
N'Djamrna - Chadian rebels attacked the eastern regional capital of Abeche on Saturday in their latest strike against President Idriss Deby's rule, and aid workers based there said some insurgents had entered the town.
But it was not immediately clear who controlled Abeche, which is located 160km from the border with Sudan and is a base for operations by international humanitarian organisations working in Chad's violence-torn east.
The town lies on the main road to the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, which is some 600km to the west. The French military also has forces stationed in Abeche under a defence cooperation accord with the government.
Aid workers in Abeche were woken by the sound of intense automatic rifle fire and heavier weapons coming from the outskirts of the town. This lasted for around an hour.
Some rebel units appeared to have penetrated into the town. "We've seen rebels in vehicles in the streets," an official of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, who asked not to be named, told Reuters by satellite phone.
But he added it appeared these rebel vehicles had moved on and the fighting had subsided. "For the moment, the situation is calm," he added.
"All of our defence and security forces are converging on the region," Chad's Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah told Reuters in N'Djamena.
"Abeche has not fallen into the hands of the rebels," he added, saying fighting between rebel and government forces had taken place on the outskirts of the town
Eastern Chad, where UNHCR runs camps for thousands of refugees from Sudan's Darfur and for displaced Chadians, has seen numerous attacks in recent months, including offensives by anti-Deby rebels Chad says are backed by Sudan.
Besides being a centre for aid operations, Abeche is also one of the bases for a French military contingent stationed in Chad, which operates a squadron of Mirage fighters.
France has in the past backed the Deby government against the rebels with logistics and intelligence support.
Diplomats said they believed the latest attack from the east was being carried out by rebels of the anti-Deby coalition, Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD).
The French embassy consular section on Friday night issued a warning to its citizens in Chad to stay indoors, saying a strong rebel column was inside the country and moving west.
UFDD fighters carried out their last offensive in late October, seizing one eastern town and attacking another before being pushed back by government forces. In April, another group of rebels had attacked the capital N'Djamena but was repulsed.
Sudan denies backing the rebels but Chad's government accuses its eastern neighbour of waging a regional war of destabilisation from the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in ethnic and political fighting since 2003.
Chad's government on Friday extended for six months a state of emergency in N'Djamena and other regions, including the east, which had been imposed on November13 to tackle recent ethnic clashes and armed raids that have killed hundreds of villagers.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Hancock in N'Djamena and Pascal Fletcher in Dakar)