French Jets Retaliate, Hit Libyan Air Base in Chad

French jet fighters, in a retaliatory strike, raided the Libyan military air base at Ouadi Doum in northern Chad on Wednesday, firing missiles that reportedly crippled radar installations on the airstrip, the French Defense Ministry announced.

But the raid evidently failed to put the air base out of action. Ahmad Allam-Mi, Chad’s ambassador to France, announced in Paris that a few hours after the French raid, Libyan warplanes, presumably from Ouadi Doum, bombed a Chadian government post at Kouba Oulanga in southern Chad.

The quick Libyan response to the French raid, if confirmed, threatened to intensify the confrontation in Chad between France and Libya. Kouba Oulanga lies 40 miles south of the 16th Parallel that divides Chad almost in half, and France, which backs the government of President Hissen Habre against northern rebels supported by Libya, has threatened to retaliate against any Libyan military incursion below that line.

The French raid on Ouadi Doum appeared to be a measured reaction by the French government to the bombing Sunday of the village of Arada in southern Chad by four Libyan MIG-23 fighter-bombers. A Chadian was killed and four others were wounded in that attack.

France drew speedy support from Washington for its attack on the Libyan air base. White House spokesman Larry Speakes said: “We have expressed general support for the French role in Chad, and we continue to do so in this case. We are not at all surprised by the French reaction.”

Wednesday’s attack on Ouadi Doum, which lies 550 miles northeast of Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, was the second in less than a year. French jets hit Libyan installations at the airstrip there last February, and the Libyans responded the next day with a raid on the airport at N’Djamena.

On Wednesday, about 10 French jets, according to French sources, zoomed over Ouadi Doum from French bases at N’Djamena and at Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. The Defense Ministry said the French planes were deployed as part of Operation Sparrowhawk, the code name for the French program of military support--mostly in the form of air power and air defense--for the Chadian government. The French have 1,400 military men in southern Chad in connection with the operation.

Decision Difficult

French officials clearly had considerable difficulty in deciding how to retaliate amid the political and military confusion gripping the impoverished, landlocked, desert country in north-central Africa.

Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, said that the decision to destroy only radar installations was worked out after a series of consultations among President Francois Mitterrand, Premier Jacques Chirac and Defense Minister Andre Giraud. The news agency said that French officials wanted to make it difficult for the Libyans to use the base and at the same time cause no harm to Chadian civilians living near Ouadi Doum.

The latest flare-up of trouble in Chad appears to pose special problems for Premier Chirac, who has been criticized recently for his handling of student and labor troubles. Chirac obviously wants to demonstrate his toughness toward Col. Moammar Kadafi, the Libyan leader, while making sure that the situation in Chad is not blown out of proportion. Both he and Mitterrand insist that they have no intention of sending French soldiers to fight in Chad.

In a radio interview Tuesday night, Chirac, even while promising some kind of French response, said that the Libyan attack on Arada below the 16th Parallel was only “an insect bite” and might have been the result of a navigational error.

Chadians on Offensive

The government forces of President Habre have taken the offensive in the civil war in Chad, mainly because of a sharp split among the rebels. Officials in N’Djamena say that government troops have crossed the 16th Parallel into the north and have taken the Libyan garrison of Fada and the outpost of Zouar in the mountainous northwest.

The rebel split came when former President Goukouni Oueddei, the main rebel leader, was wounded in a shoot-out with his Libyan guards in Tripoli. Goukouni is reported to be under house arrest, and his forces in northern Chad have broken with Libya.

Taking advantage of this, the French have been airlifting U.S. and French military supplies to Goukouni’s men, who are defending themselves from attacks by other rebels and Libyan troops.

France, which has been involved in the civil wars of its former colony for two decades, was extremely embarrassed in 1984 when President Mitterrand and Col. Kadafi, meeting on the island of Crete, issued a statement saying that both had complied with an earlier agreement to withdraw their troops from Chad.

The French had withdrawn their soldiers but, in what seemed like an effort to humiliate Mitterrand, the Libyans reneged on their part of the agreement and kept their troops in place. The French, trying to put the best face on the situation, said it did not matter as long as Kadafi kept them out of military operations.

But when evidence mounted that the Libyans were helping the rebels in military operations, France sent in its small force of air defense personnel in Operation Sparrowhawk.

The Libyan air base of Ouadi Doum, with a 12,500-foot runway, is 95 miles northeast of the oasis of Faya-Largeau, the main administrative center for northern Chad. French military sources estimate that 8,000 Libyan troops are still in Chad.