Word: rebel
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy likes to adopt a Travis Bickle "you-talkin-to-me?" swagger when seeking to intimidate political rivals, protesters and the French media. But it remains to be seen whether Sarkozy's snarl will prompt a retreat by hardened rebel fighters in Chad. Amid a lull in the battle for control of the Chadian capital of N'Djamena on Tuesday, Sarkozy responded to rebel threats of renewed violence by warning, "If France must do its duty, it will - let no one doubt that...
...rebel fighters who stormed N'Djamena Friday evening withdrew when formerly grounded Chadian Army helicopters attacked their trucks and positions in the capital. What they left in their wake bore witness to the intense and random nature of the violence. N'Djamena's main business street, the avenue Charles de Gaulle, was littered with destroyed cars, burned corpses, and the detritus of trees cut down by flurries of machine gun and rocket fire, according to eyewitnesses. Although initial reports described fighting limited to rebel and government forces, French aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières said...
...rebels claimed their fall back was merely a tactical move to resupply and organize a final push on the capital. Thousands of Chadian civilians flocked from N'Djamena Monday ahead of a feared resurgence in fighting in the coming hours or days. Rebel leaders pledged to finish off the government forces in N'Djamena once they'd regrouped, and threatened to attack an airbase French troops are using to airlift foreigners caught up in the fighting. The insurgents claim the airlifts served as cover for the rocket-firing Chadian army helicopters, which operate out of the same airstrip and that...
...have been limited to offering the President safe passage and refuge in Paris - a proposition the mutiny-hardened Déby declined. But despite what French Defense Minister Hervé Morin called France's "neutral" position in the conflict, he and other diplomats have begun venting anger over the rebel offensive, for which they, too, hold Sudan responsible...
...Morin did over the weekend, French officials are describing the timing of Thursday's rebel push from Sudan as designed to disrupt impending deployment of the European Union's 3,700 EUFOR peacekeeping force along Chad's eastern border. Those troops are charged with establishing safe zones to protect refugees from violence-torn Darfur. That imposition of well-armed foreign soldiers, French officials say, would have complicated Khartoum's plans to destabilizing the Chadian regime...