France sent troops and planes to Chad Monday to support President Hissene Habre`s government against Libyan-backed rebels who bombed the airport at N`Djamena, Chad`s capital.
Defense Minister Paul Quiles announced the deployment after reporting that a Libyan Tupolev-22 had bombed the N`Djamena airport about 7 a.m. Monday. On Sunday, French planes bombed an airfield at a Libyan-built rebel base in the north of the former French colony in Africa.
The Chadian Foreign Ministry said the bombing marked an escalation of Libyan aggression.
”The ambition of (Libyan leader Moammar) Khadafy does not stop at the 16th parallel, but the Tripoli regime wants to annihilate and annex the whole of Chad,” it said.
In Tripoli, the Libyan news agency JANA said the N`Djamena raid was carried out by the ”air force” of the Chadian rebels and was in response to the French raid. Libyan Information Minister Mohammed Fitouri denied that his government was involved.
The rebels are not known to have their own air force, but the Libyans have Soviet-made Tupolev jets.
Quiles said damage at N`Djamena airport was ”minimal” and no one was hurt. JANA said the strike ”rendered it unusable.”
The French attack Sunday, using Jaguar jet ground-attack fighters based in the neighboring Central African Republic, hit the Libyan-built base at Ouadi Doum, 550 miles northeast of N`Djamena, knocking it out of action.
France said the Ouadi Doum airfield, completed last year, was being used to support rebel forces of former President Goukouni Oueddei in their week-old offensive in central Chad.
France has kept 1,500 troops in the Central African Republic, poised to return to Chad, since signing a mutual withdrawal agreement with Khadafy in the fall of 1984. France says Libya never honored the pact.
Libya says Ouadi Doum was a civilian airport being used to ferry in food supplies to victims of the famine in northern Chad.
Quiles called that a ”bad joke” and said it was a ”military base and equipped as such.”
