A second day of fierce fighting rocked the Chad capital yesterday as rebels surrounded Chadian President Idriss Deby in his palace and hundreds of foreigners fled the country.
With international aid organizations reporting bodies in the streets and looting in the capital, anti-tank and automatic weapons fire was heard around the presidential palace, where Deby has been holed up since Friday.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said the new fighting could be "crucial" in the battle for control of the former French colony in central Africa.
The rebel campaign has opened up a new conflict next to Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region and the deployment of a planned European peacekeeping mission in Chad and Central African Republic has been suspended, Morin said in Paris.
Chadian army helicopters attacked a rebel column attempting to make a breakthrough in the south of the city where the national radio station is located. They also fired at other rebel vehicles in the city.
A tank was defending the entrance to the national radio and was firing at anyone who showed themselves on the street, a witness said.
"We did not take the airport so as not to hinder the evacuation of foreign nationals and now the French army is letting these helicopters take off and attack us," said Abderaman Khoulamallah, a rebel spokesman.
The fighting closed in on the airport and forced a temporary halt to the airlift of foreigners. But the French military said a Hercules plane carrying 104 people left yesterday morning.
A French foreign ministry statement said 217 French nationals and 297 foreigners had been flown out of N'Djamena.
The UN said it would evacuate all UN personnel and US embassy staff were taken to the French military base yesterday to be flown out, military sources said.
China was organizing an airlift for 210 Chinese and two Taiwanese to Cameroon, Xinhua news agency reported.
The French ministry said about 400 foreigners were still grouped at two hotels, the French international school and two other emergency assembly points.
But Deby, who seized power at the head of a similar rebel force in 1990, refused a French offer to help him leave the country.
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