EU troops increase patrols in Chad security alert

European Union troops in eastern Chad stepped up patrols around refugee camps on Friday and aid workers restricted movements after anti-government rebels announced an offensive.

Chad's government and its rebel opponents have given sharply conflicting versions of reported military movements in the Dar Sila region near the Sudan border, where Irish EU soldiers are protecting U.N.-run camps for Sudanese and Chadian refugees.

The Irish are part of an EU military mission in Chad whose mandate is to protect civilians, including more than 200,000 Sudanese refuges who have fled the five-year-old conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, which lies on Chad's eastern frontier.

While Chadian rebel spokesmen said their fighters were advancing westwards in strength and had shot down a government helicopter, government officials rejected "rebel propaganda" and said the helicopter had crash-landed with "technical problems".

Nevertheless, an earlier statement by the government in N'Djamena said "mercenaries in the pay of Sudan" - the term it uses to describe rebels fighting to topple President Idriss Deby - had crossed into Chad over the eastern border on Wednesday.

At Goz-Beida, where U.N. agencies and humanitarian NGOs operate camps for the Sudanese and Chadian refugees, Irish troops of the 97th Infantry Battalion patrolled in and around the town on foot and in armoured vehicles.

"We are continuing to monitor the situation, patrol Goz-Beida and talk to the NGOs," said the battalion spokesman Commandant Stephen Morgan. The Irish in their green battledress were conspicuous in the lighter desert colours of the region.

The Irish battalion said on Thursday it had received reports of combat between rebel forces and government helicopters at Modeina, 70 km (40 miles) northeast of Goz-Beida.

A Reuters reporter in Goz-Beida said U.N. and aid agency vehicles stayed parked because relief workers restricted travel as a precaution due to fears of renewed conflict in the east, from where rebel columns have launched offensives in the past.

"Oxfam has stopped all circulation in the field as a precaution until further notice because the security situation is unclear," Aimee Nsari, programme manager at Goz-Beida for Oxfam Great Britain, told Reuters.

Some humanitarian flights into Goz-Beida were cancelled on Friday.



REBELS SAY THEY ADVANCING

Leaders and spokesmen of the anti-Deby insurgent National Alliance said in statements to foreign media a powerful rebel force was advancing westwards towards the capital N'Djamena.

One rebel spokesman had said the rebels were prepared to call off their offensive if France and the European Union forced Deby to agree to round-table talks on Chad's political future.

In early February, rebel columns raced from the east to attack N'Djamena in a lightning raid which sent Western governments, including former colonial power France, scrambling to evacuate their nationals from the city.

Several hundred people were killed in intense fighting before the rebels pulled back after France's government and military moved to strongly support Deby, who himself seized power in an eastern revolt in 1990.

France has military aircraft and troops stationed in Chad under a defence cooperation treaty, in which Paris provides intelligence, logistical and medical help to Chad's government.

A fresh Chadian rebel offensive against Deby had been widely expected since Sudanese Darfuri insurgents attacked the Sudanese capital Khartoum in May.

Both countries accuse each other of supporting rebel groups hostile to each others' governments.

Chad's President Deby and his Sudanese counterpart Omar Hassan al-Bashir signed a non-aggression pact in Senegal in March on the sidelines of a summit of Islamic nations.

But the pact - the latest in a string of failed peace deals between the two feuding neighbours - soon collapsed amid mutual accusations of cross-border violations.