EU resumes Chad peacekeeping deployment
NDJAMENA (AFP) — The European Union resumed deployment Tuesday of a peacekeeping force to Chad, after suspending it at the start of the month when rebels stormed the capital Ndjamena, a military spokesman said.
"A Hercules C-130 transport aircraft landed at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) in Abeche with equipment aboard," Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe de Cussac said from the force's headquarters near Paris.
The flight from an unspecified European country arrived in the main town in the arid east of the central African nation, where a 14-nation EUFOR mission of 3,700 troops to Chad and the Central African Republic will be partly based.
Deployment began in late January but was suspended from February 1 after an allied group of three rebel forces coming from the troubled east arrived at the gates of the capital on Chad's western border.
The Chadian army drove the rebels hostile to President Idriss Deby Itno out of Ndjamena after a weekend of heavy fighting on the city streets on February 2 and 3, and the attackers have since withdrawn towards southeast Chad.
De Cussac said Tuesday's EUFOR Chad-CAR flight "will be followed in coming days by others to Ndjamena and Abeche, notably advance soldiers who will prepare the arrival of the bulk of the force."
In Ndjamena, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Poulain told AFP the large Hercules cargo plane was also carrying personnel, but gave no details of their number or their specific duties.
The mission has a United Nations mandate to protect refugees from western Sudan's strife-wracked Darfur region as well as people internally displaced by rebel insurgency in Chad and the northern CAR.
At least 200,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and diseases in Darfur since ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated regime in February 2003, resulting in a crackdown by government troops and Janjaweed militias.
More than two million people have been displaced across frontiers or within Sudan itself, according to UN estimates, but the EUFOR mandate for Chad and the CAR strictly concerns protecting refugees and easing relief work in troubled regions.
EUFOR is commanded from France by Irish Major General Pat Nash and in Chad itself by French Brigadier General Jean-Philippe Ganascia, who has expressed hope of getting the force to operational capacity by the end of March.
EU diplomats in Brussels and the EUFOR commanders want the whole force to be in Chad by May and the start of the rainy season.
However, the delay caused by the rebel offensive came on top of difficulties among European countries on agreeing on the size of the mission and respective contingents. France will provide more than 2,000 of the troops.
Life in Ndjamena has slowly begun to resume in the wake of the onslaught by the rebels, but traces of the battles involving heavily armed rebel and army pick-up trucks, and Russian-made tanks and helicopters scarred the city.
Many residents feared a further attack, though the government has lifted a night-time curfew imposed on the town, and while the Red Cross put the death toll at about 160, with hundreds injured, witnesses spoke of civilians being killed by helicopters attacking rebel positions and families burying their own dead.
"It was such a panic, getting back to normal is very tough," Lol Ali Choua, the headmaster of one school, told AFP. His Lycee de la Liberte reopened on Tuesday, but he said only about 300 of the 2,000 pupils had shown up. "Twenty teachers out of 40 reported in."
On General de Gaulle street, a main business avenue, the Financial Bank was open and more staff had turned up, but a rocket had blown a hole in the facade, fresh layers of cement covered other weapon impacts and the shattered windows were boarded up.
A scheduled Air France flight arrived from Paris on Tuesday morning and flew out with about 50 passengers, marking the reopening of the civilian part of the airport, but the company has cut back scheduled flights from seven to four a week.
The bulk of a permanent French troop contingent in the former colony, which was reinforced to 1,450 men to evacuate foreigners from the fighting, is based on the military part of the airport, with Chadian forces.
