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NDJAMENA: Foreigners fled Chad on Saturday as rebels surrounded the presidential palace where the African nation's leader was holed up, military and rebel sources said.
As international organisations reported looting in the capital and bodies littering the streets, a French military plane took 75 French and other nationalities out of Ndjamena late Saturday.
The French military said 900 foreigners had gathered at three assembly points around the city. The United Nations said it planned to evacuate its personnel to Cameroon.
No death toll from the fighting has been given but a UN security official said there were a lot of bodies in the streets, "some burned, some just hacked" to death.
France sent an extra 150 troops to help with the evacuations and French President Nicolas Sarkozy broke off from celebrating his wedding to twice telephone the west African nation's President Idriss Deby Itno.
The Libyan news agency, Jana, said that Mahamat Nouri, the main rebel leader, has accepted a ceasefire proposed by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, who was part of African Union efforts to halt the fighting.
There was no immediate confirmation in Chad.
The rebel force in about 300 pickup trucks started moving across the desert from a base near the eastern border with Sudan on Monday but major fighting only erupted Friday as they neared the capital.
Rebels took over large sections of Ndjamena on Saturday, military and rebel sources said, having already seized outlying neighbourhoods and much of the city centre in intense fighting with government forces.
As dusk fell, only sporadic gunfire could be heard, but rebel spokesman Abakar Tollimi said before the ceasefire reports that there were plans to attack the presidential palace.
"We suppose that Deby is inside. If he wants to leave we have no problem," Tollimi told AFP by satellite telephone. "We control the situation, we control the city, there are some pockets of resistance."
A military source told AFP however that government forces were trying "to push the rebels back in the east of the city and take back some territory in the city centre."
French military sources said there were about 2,000 rebels armed mainly with machine guns, assault rifles and rocket launchers.
According to witnesses, people in some neighbourhoods welcomed the rebels as they entered the city in their camouflage pick-up trucks and wearing olive-green battledress and white armbands.
International security organisations reported that looting had broken out.
Chad's Foreign Minister Amad Allam-Mi told AFP that Deby was at the presidency and in control of the situation.
Allam-Mi accused Sudan of masterminding the rebel offensive in a bid to halt plans for a European peacekeeping force in Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic. The mission is to protect refugees from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.
"Sudan does not want this force because it would open a window on the genocide in Darfur," the minister told Radio France Internationale, adding that Sudan was trying "to install a regime in Chad that will bow to it."
The first foreigners evacuated flew to Libreville, the capital of Gabon, from where they will fly on to France, French military officials said. Another 400 foreigners had expressed the desire to leave the country, they added.
France, which now has about 1,450 troops in Chad, has strongly condemned "the attempt to seize power" in Chad by "armed groups from the outside."
On top of speaking to Deby, the French president held two emergency meetings on the Chad crisis, his office said.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called for a truce and negotiations between the government and the rebel forces.
France has 1,500 citizens in its former colony, most of them in the capital.
The United States said it was closely monitoring the fighting. Its embassy evacuated some staff and the families of all embassy expatriates.
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.
Rebel leaders Timan Erdimi, Mahamat Nouri and Adbelwahid Aboud Makaye joined forces in December after a peace pact with Deby collapsed.
African Union leaders meeting in Addis Ababa said the body "strongly condemns" the rebel attacks and demanded an end to the violence. - AFP/ac
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