Fighting continues in Chad

Press, 28 March 1980, Page 6

Fighting continues in Chad

NZPA-Reuter Pans .Fighting continued in the devastated Chad capital of Ndjamena yesterday, after the failure of peace talks' between the two main warring factions, according to French offidftls iu Paris*.• Reports reaching. .Paris said forces loyal to Presii dent; Goukouni Oueddei and supporters of the I Defence . Minister '-• (Mr i Hissen Habre) were ,ex- ' changing sporadic fire* in i the city, while a third fac- . I tion, led-by Vice-President •- Abdeikader Wadal . Ka-

mougue, was bombarding the city from the outskirts. Representatives of President Goukouni and the Defence Minister met for peace talks on Wednesday in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Ndjamena, but the French officials said the meeting had broken up with no indication of an agreement. Several hundred people have been killed since the fighting began early . on A Saturday.: French officials said hundreds of casualties, had . been treated at a

French military base near Ndjamena Airport. A Chad official delegation flew to Yaounde, Cameroon, aboard a French military aircraft on Wednesday night to seek emergency humanitarian assistance. The French officials said .about; 50 Europeans‘ were < left in the embattled Chad capital. They had refused to leave with the rest of the white ‘population which has been evacuated under the protection of ' French troops in the ■ pre-.vious.two-days? ; A first group of about

150 refugees arrived yesterday in Paris, telling of nights of fear crouching in corridors in their homes as the fighting raged in Ndjamena. They said that a French military aircraft with refugees on board had come under , machine-gun fire when it took off from Ndjamena Airport yesterday. ’ Most of them were haggard and still trembling from their ordeal, and vowed never to return to the central African country. " ■