N'DJAMENA—Thousands of civilians fled Chad's capital on Monday after rebel forces pulled back from the city following two days of street fighting in an attempt to overthrow President Idriss Deby.
The central African country's government said it had forced back the rebels, who had stormed into N'Djamena aboard armed pickup trucks. But the rebels called the pullback late on Sunday a "tactical withdrawal" before a renewed assault.
"We're asking the population to leave," rebel spokesman Abderamane Koullamalah told Radio France International (RFI).
Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-mi said N'Djamena was calm and under the control of Deby's government forces.
"The battle of N'Djamena is over," he said, speaking to RFI from Addis Ababa where he had attended an African Union summit.
The rebels, including some of Deby's former allies, denounce his 18-year rule as corrupt and dictatorial. Chad says they are backed by Sudan, which denies helping them and in turn accuses the Chadians of supporting rebels in its Darfur region.
The rebel attack, the second in under two years to hit the capital, forced France to use its troops stationed in its former colony to evacuate at least 700 French and other foreign nationals from the landlocked oil-producing state.
Inside N'Djamena, a Reuters reporter said there were no sounds of fighting on Monday morning.
Military vehicles belonging to government forces moved around the city. Bodies of dead civilians were visible in some streets, killed in two days of chaotic heavy fighting over the weekend that followed the rebel thrust into the city.
A Reuters correspondent across the Logone-Chari river from the city reported a flood of refugees streaming over the Ngueli bridge into Cameroon.
"I saw one girl wounded from a stray bullet in the back. There were children crying, almost all of them were frightened," Reuters Television correspondent Emmanuel Braun said.
Rebel spokesman Koullamalah told RFI that rebel units were still "at the gates of the city".
Earlier, the Chadian opposition Website Alwihda quoted him as saying the rebel forces had made a tactical withdrawal to meet up with reinforcements coming from the east with fresh ammunition and supplies.
But Foreign Minister Allam-mi said the three columns of rebel attackers totalling up to 2,500 fighters had been defeated.
Eastern Front
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres estimated that several hundred people had been injured.
But the situation remained confused.
An attack by anti-Deby forces on Sunday on the far eastern town of Adre, on the border with Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region, opened a new front in the fighting.
Chad's army said it repulsed the ground and air attack by a mixed force of Sudanese army troops and rebels. Deby's Minister of State for Mines and Energy, General Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, called the attack "a declaration of war" by Sudan.
Allam-mi said Chad's army would enter Sudan in pursuit of rebels if this was necessary for his country's security. Sudan has denied supporting the rebel offensive.
A rebel spokesman said Adre had been "liberated" and the northern town of Faya Largeau had also been captured. No independent confirmation was immediately available.
France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Defence Minister Herve Morin said French forces secured Chad's airbases and were protecting French and foreign civilians, but had so far been neutral in battles between rebels and the army.
Kouchner called the rebel offensive on Chad's capital N'Djamena a cruel attack, and said growing international condemnation could lead to other forms of intervention.
The U.N. Security Council met in an extraordinary session on Sunday called by France, but failed to come to agreement on a draft statement backing the Chadian government.
Feeds