Libyans Display Chadian Prisoners in Recaptured Town

Libyan military officers Saturday displayed arms and Chadian soldiers they said were captured in retaking the desert outpost of Aozou in the disputed Aozou Strip from Chad.

Chad continued to deny that Libya recaptured the village of Aozou in its first victory after a string of costly Libyan defeats in northern Chad and in the border area, which both countries claim as their own.

But Libya took six Western journalists to the battle site, about 40 miles south of the internationally recognized border between Libya and Chad, to see the spoils of war and its victims.

Libya’s JANA news agency had announced earlier that Libyan forces captured Aozou on Friday after a two-hour fight. State-run Libyan radio also carried the announcement and congratulated the military.

“We have no desire or wish to kill anybody, but this is our land,” said 45-year-old Col. Ali Sherif Rify, who led the Libyans. “The situation forced us to use all the facilities we had to recapture this land.”

The visit offered a rare glimpse of the front, which has seen renewed fighting over the past few years.

Libya annexed the 43,000-square-mile Aozou Strip, a barren and sparsely populated piece of land across the northern border of Chad, in 1973. Libya claims the land on the basis of a 1935 treaty between Italy, which controlled Libya at that time, and France, which controlled Chad. The treaty was never ratified.

Chad contests this claim, and no other country recognizes the annexation.

Rify said Libyan forces, using mostly Soviet-made aircraft, attacked the area first by air, then closed in on the ground and waged a two-hour battle.

There was no definite estimate of casualties. Libyan military officials said Chadian deaths numbered in the hundreds, but only about 25 to 30 bodies were seen.

There were few signs of hand-to-hand combat in the village, but much of it was in ruins from what appeared to be heavy bombing. Chadian armaments and supplies were scattered about the village and on the sandy road leading to it.

Strewn in the area were the scarlet berets of the Chadian army, their insignia readily identifiable, apparently abandoned in haste. There were cans of Chadian-made tomato paste, cartons of cigarettes, and on the wall of a deserted schoolhouse where Libyan soldiers lunched on dates and cans of Pepsi, a bold message was scrawled in French:

“The Chadian Armed National Forces took Aozou on the 8th of August, 1987.”

The officials said many Chadians fled, and they showed reporters six captured Chadian soldiers and said that 15 others were also being held. The Libyans said three of their own soldiers were killed and five were wounded.

Many of the captured jeeps, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces were French- or American-made.

The Chadian army said fighting for control of the area continued Saturday, according to an Agence France-Presse dispatch from the Chadian capital of N’Djamena.

But the French news agency quoted anonymous sources in Paris as saying that Chadian troops retreated from Aozou to Bardai, about 25 miles southwest.

The only sign of Chadian resistance was an occasional burst of machine-gun fire rippling through the valleys of the bleak surrounding Tibesti Mountains.

Rify said the key element in the victory was “surprise” and that Libyans were still mopping up isolated pockets of resistance.

The Aozou region, believed to be rich in uranium and other minerals, is about 900 miles south of the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Chadian President Hissen Habre’s army drove the Libyans from the rest of northern Chad in March, and he vowed to retake the Aozou Strip.