Fierce fighting rocked N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, yesterday for the second day running as President Déby hit back with helicopter gunships and heavy artillery against rebels laying siege to the presidential palace.

Troops loyal to Mr Déby, a virtual prisoner in his heavily fortified presidential compound in the west of the city since Saturday, fought battles with insurgents and drove them out of the capital last night.

“The battle for N’Djamena is over,” declared Amad Allam-Mi, the Foreign Minister. However, the rebels claimed to have withdrawn only temporarily.

“People should not think that Déby has won,” a rebel commander said. “He is still entrenched in his bunker, from which he cannot leave.” The President had reportedly declined offers to flee the city by air to France, his main international supporter.

At the hight of the fighting, military helicopters bombed the Sudan-backed rebels who swept into the city from the north at the weekend in about 300 pick-up trucks mounted with cannon. Hundreds more foreigners were evacuated from the country, which it is feared could slide into full-scale war with neighbouring Sudan.

The two countries severed diplomatic relations in April 2006 after an earlier attack on the Chadian capital. Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, then brokered an uneasy peace deal, which has unravelled several times.

International organisations reported dozens of people killed in the fighting. Telephone lines to the run-down city were mostly down and satellite phones were blocked.

The rebel force, which has no defence against air power, was unable to press home an early advantage. Residents said that heavy weapons and machinegun fire erupted before dawn near the palace, not far from two hotels where several hundred foreigners were sheltering.

During fighting on Saturday, prisoners escaped from a main jail and looting was reported across the city. Witnesses said that the latest battles had destroyed the main market in N’Djamena and the national radio station. One witness said: “The public market was partly set on fire in the morning after a helicopter [belonging to government forces] fired a rocket at rebels.” Another witness reported that the radio station had been pillaged by a mob. Broadcasting equipment was smashed and computers stolen.

France, the former colonial ruler, has a military contingent in Chad and an air base near Abéché, close to the border with Sudan. It has condemned the rebel assault, but indicated that it will give only political support to President Déby, whose Government is frequently cited as one of the most corrupt in the world.

Yesterday the French military continued to withdraw French and foreign citizens. Paris said that French planes had transported more than 500 French and other foreigners to Gabon and that about 400 more were still waiting to be taken out.

The rebels fought their way into the capital after a lightning offensive across the huge, landlocked Central African state, which shares a long frontier with the troubled southern Sudanese province of Darfur.

Many of Mr Déby’s tribesmen are members of the main Darfur rebel movements. In retaliation Khartoum has backed commanders who are in dispute with Mr Déby over the distribution of Chad’s immense but largely unexploited oil wealth. Mr Déby, a French-trained helicopter pilot, took power in a military coup in 1990 and changed the Constitution to remain in power after disputed elections.

The upsurge in fighting has delayed the deployment of a European Union peacekeeping force, agreed in January, to eastern Chad’s border with Darfur, raising fears for the security of thousands of Sudanese refugees cared for by foreign aid workers. The United Nations Security Council was meeting last night to discuss the crisis.

A joint African Union-United Nations (AU-UN) force is supposed to be taking up position on the other side of the border, but its deployment has been beset by administrative and logistical problems. Khartoum opposes the involvement of Western countries in the AU-UN force, and was unhappy with the EU troop deployment.

A Darfur rebel commander yesterday maintained that Sudanese government planes and vehicles were attacking the Chadian eastern border town of Adre. Sudan denied the reports.

Sammani al-Wassila, the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, said: “What’s happening in Chad is an internal matter and we have nothing to do with it.”

Hervé Morin, the French Defence Minister, said yesterday that the situation remained uncertain. “I believe President Déby is in charge of his troops,” he told Reuters Television. He told French media, however, that Mr Déby’s armed forces chief of staff was believed to have been killed.

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