RIYADH, 3 February 2008 — The wife and daughter of a Saudi employee at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Ndjamena were killed during a bomb attack on the Saudi ambassador’s residence yesterday.
“During the fighting in Ndjamena, the residence of the Saudi ambassador was hit by a bomb, killing the wife and daughter of an embassy employee,” the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
At the time of the explosion, all of the mission’s staff and their families were at the ambassador’s residence and were preparing for evacuation, the ministry spokesman added.
The attack occurred when Chadian rebels seized the capital city yesterday after intense fighting with government forces.
President Idriss Deby Itno remained holed up in the presidential palace, a military source said. “The whole of the city is in the hands of the rebels. It’s down to mopping-up operations,” said the source.
Chadian rebel spokesman Abakar Tollimi said the president could leave his palace where he has been trapped by insurgent forces, if he so wishes.
“We suppose that Deby is inside. If he wants to leave we have no problem,” Tollimi told news agencies by satellite telephone. “We control the situation, we control the city, there are some pockets of resistance.”
Tollimi said government troops were around the presidential palace and using heavy weapons against the rebels, who military sources said earlier were armed with machine-guns, assault rifles and rocket launchers.
One source said that government tanks had fired on the rebels at Deby’s orders in a bid to break their grip.
France sent an extra 150 troops to the central African country and prepared to evacuate its citizens, while French Defense Minister Herve Morin said rebels were battling government forces as they closed in on the presidential palace.
Despite the reports, Chad’s foreign minister told AFP that Deby was at the presidency and the situation was under control in the city.
“I spoke with the presidency 10 minutes ago and they assured me that the situation (was under) control,” Amad Allam-Mi said in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit.
Allam-Mi accused Sudan of masterminding the rebel offensive to stop the so-called EUFOR mission that is to protect refugees from Darfur, just over Chad’s eastern border, from deploying.
“Since the announcement that this European force will arrive, the Sudanese government has stepped up the number of attacks, to discourage the European Union,” he told Radio France Internationale in an interview.
He said Sudan was trying “to install a regime in Chad that will bow to it.”
The EUFOR mission announced Friday a temporary delay in troop flights to Ndjamena, and an EU military spokesman said yesterday there were no plans to send members to Chad over the weekend as it was “still very unstable” on the ground.
