UFDD Video

Here is a Brand New video From the UFDD rebels led by Abakar Tollimi .
Note the close up on the passanger in Front Seat of the Truck. He looks familiar, but Ican't quite place him.

-Shimron

N'Djamena Appears to have Fallen

N'Djamena - Chad's rebel forces appear to have taken the capital N'Djamena.

Unconfirmed reports say several thousand heavily armed rebels have entered the city and surrounded the presidential palace.

There are reports of heavy fighting but there is no word on President Idriss Déby.

The rebels, who are backed by Sudan, began advancing on the capital earlier this week, after leaving in a convoy of several hundred trucks from the border with Sudan.

France has sent a plane to evacuate hundreds of French citizens and other foreigners. US nationals have been urged to report to the embassy.

The United Nations is withdrawing its entire staff. The deployment of a European Union peacekeeping force due to begin on Friday evening has been suspended.

The EU force was to be stationed along the border with Sudan to protect local residents, refugees from Darfur and UN staff.

The Rest @ Radio Netherlands

Rebel and Govermnet Forces Fighiting in Chad's Capital N'Djamena

By Nico Colombant Dakar02 February 2008

Chadian rebels have entered Chad's capital N'Djamena and are battling against army units near the presidential palace. This follows a one-week rebel offensive to topple long-term President Idriss Deby. VOA's Nico Colombant reports from our regional bureau in Dakar.

Military officials, rebels and international aid workers confirmed the fighting around the presidential palace.

• Clashes began early Saturday 20 kilometers outside the capital, before engulfing the city center.
• Residents in N'Djamena say they heard increasingly intense heavy arms fire. They say rebels occupied the east and south of the capital, and that there was fighting around the airport as well.
• An exiled rebel spokesman who has been in contact with rebels on the ground, Makaila Nguebla, says Chad's army has offered little resistance.
• He says rebels from several groups who allied themselves for this offensive were able to cross Chad over the course of one week from their bases near Sudan and enter the capital in one day.
• The rebels say that if they take over, they will impose transitional rule for two years before organizing free and fair elections. Chad has had several coups since independence from France in 1960.
• The newly-elected head of the African Union, Gabon's Foreign Minister Jean Ping, said he was very worried by the situation. He also said the African Union would not accept an unconstitutional change of government.
• President Deby has been in power since 1990. Several years ago, he changed the constitution to allow unlimited presidential terms. He went to the scene of fighting Friday, before returning to the capital. Military officials who spoke to media did not immediately disclose his location.
• His rule has been marked by accusations of corruption in the newly-emerging oil sector, and lately by defections from his clan-based inner circle to various rebel movements.
• The French army, which has a permanent military base in Chad, has been giving the Chadian army logistical and surveillance support, but has said it will not enter into direct combat with rebels.
• The fighting has led to the postponement of the deployment of a planned European Union peacekeeping force to secure people displaced from the conflict in Chad, as well as fighting in nearby Central African Republic, and from Sudan's warring Darfur region.
• Border regions at the intersection of these three countries have been wracked by different rebellions, attacks by vigilante groups and inter-ethnic communal fighting in recent years.
  

Gunnmen Enter Eastern Chad, Beat Aid Workers

N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Armed rebels and unidentified gunmen entered two towns in eastern Chad at the weekend and beat two foreign aid workers after rebel factions abandoned a month-old ceasefire, humanitarian staff said on Sunday.

The unrest underlined deteriorating security in the area where European Union peacekeepers hope to start deploying in the next few weeks to complement a hybrid U.N./African force planned for Sudan's violent Darfur region, over Chad's eastern frontier.

Leaders of Chad's two biggest rebel movements, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) and the Assembly of Forces for Change (RFC), said late on Friday they would break a ceasefire as of Sunday -- a month to the day since they groups signed a Libyan-brokered peace deal with President Idriss Deby.

Just a few hours later, on Saturday, several UFDD vehicles entered the town of Hadjer Hadid, 70 km east of the eastern city of Abeche, triggering a security alert and prompting French and Chadian helicopters to take off in a vain pursuit.

Aid workers in the area said the rebels exchanged fire with government security forces in Hadjer Hadid, though UFDD leaders said their fighters entered the town only to get water and left shortly afterwards without launching any attack.

"We will attack Deby's forces if they continue to provoke us," UFDD Secretary General Abakar Tollimi told Reuters by satellite phone on Sunday.

French forces based in Abeche stepped up security at the town's airport late on Saturday following the attack, aid workers in the city said.

Humanitarian work was suspended until further notice at two refugee camps near Hadjer Hadid, a U.N. official in Abeche said.

The Rest @ Reuters Africa