NDJAMENA, Feb 2: Rebels seized Chad’s capital Ndjamena on Saturday after intense fighting with government forces, military and rebel sources said, as President Idriss Deby Itno remained holed up in the presidential palace.

“The whole of the city is in the hands of the rebels. It’s down to mopping-up operations,” according to the military source.

Chadian rebel spokesman Abakar Tollimi said the president could leave his palace, if he so wishes, but later added that there were plans to attack the presidential residence.

“We suppose that Deby is inside. If he wants to leave we have no problem,” the spokesman said by satellite telephone. “We control the situation, we control the city, there are some pockets of resistance.”

He said government troops were around the presidential palace and using heavy weapons against the rebels, who military sources said earlier were armed with machine-guns, assault rifles and rocket launchers.

A French military source later said Chadian government forces had beaten back the rebels surrounding the presidential palace.

“Chadian forces have enlarged the security perimeter around the presidential palace,” the source said, adding that fighting was continuing in the city and the outcome was still uncertain.

The wife and daughter of a Saudi employee at the Saudi embassy in Ndjamena were killed when a bomb hit the ambassador’s residence, the Saudi foreign ministry announced.France sent an extra 150 troops to the central African country, bringing to 1,450 the number permanently posted there and prepared to evacuate its citizens.

Chad’s Foreign Minister Amad Allam-Mi accused Sudan of masterminding the rebel offensive with the aim to stop the so-called EUFOR Chad-Central African Republic mission that is to protect refugees from the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, just over Chad’s eastern border, from deploying.

“Sudan does not want this force because it would open a window on the genocide in Darfur,” he told Radio France Internationale, adding that Sudan was trying “to install a regime in Chad that will bow to it.”

The EUFOR mission has a UN Security Council mandate to back up, for one year, some 300 UN police officers sent to monitor camps for Darfur refugees and internally displaced persons.

The rebels were seen on Saturday roaring around in camouflaged pick-up trucks, witnesses said, and had been welcomed with joy in some districts.

Witnesses said the main prison in Ndjamena had been stormed and inmates released, while security sources reported some looting had taken place.

The French foreign ministry strongly condemned “the attempt to seize power” in Chad by “armed groups from the outside”.

French troops have been deployed in Chad since 1986.

A spokesman in Paris for French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had had a long conversation with his Chadian counterpart.

The country has 1,500 French citizens in Chad, a former French colony, with 85 per cent of them in the capital.

The United States said it was closely monitoring the fighting, as its embassy ordered the evacuation of staff families and selected employees.—AFP