RIYADH (Agencies)
Saudi Arabia has closed its embassy in Chad and evacuated all employees, following last weekend's bombing of its mission in which two Saudis were killed, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.
"All employees of the (Saudi) embassy and their families have been evacuated and the embassy has been closed," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
It said embassy staff and dependants were on their way back to Saudi Arabia aboard a private plane and an air ambulance carrying the bodies of the employee's wife and daughter killed on Saturday.
A young daughter and young son of the employee were also being given medical treatment, the statement said without elaborating on their condition.
The ministry had announced on Saturday that the wife and daughter of an embassy employee were killed when what was apparently a stray bomb hit the ambassador's residence in Ndjamena.
It said that at the time of the explosion, all of the mission's staff and their families were gathered in the residence in readiness for evacuation and it was not a deliberate attack.
The incident occurred as rebels seized large parts of Ndjamena after intense fighting with government forces.
Meanwhile, the Organization of the Islamic Conference on Tuesday called for an end to heavy fighting between rebels and government forces.
"OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu... urged the parties to bring the violence to an end and seek a negotiated peaceful settlement as the only means to resolve differences." the 57-member bloc said in a statement.
Chad is a member of the OIC, the world's largest pan-Islamic body based in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing the Chad capital on Monday, as rebels threatened a fresh offensive to oust President Idriss Deby after two days of heavy fighting saw them pull out of the city.
The Chadian government was back in control of the capital and its immediate surroundings on Tuesday, according to the French ambassador. |
