Humanitarian workers said insecurity in the central African country was hampering their efforts to help refugees from Sudan's Darfur region, underlining the urgent need for a European Union peacekeeping force (EUFOR) to deploy.

Deby declared a state of emergency in the former French colony late on Thursday, giving his government exceptional powers for 15 days to censor the media, search people and property and tightly regulate all movement around the country.

Both the army and police had already been searching houses across the capital looking for rebels being sheltered or goods that were looted from state buildings during the rebel assault.

Soldiers on motorbikes, mostly commandeered from civilians, buzzed around the dusty city as residents watched from doorways. Some complained the security forces were taking advantage of the crackdown to raid homes or steal.

"At night now every minute you hear 'pop pop' here or 'pop pop' there, and you don't know who is shooting or why," said one N'Djamena resident, adding he was too afraid to give his name.

Police said they had received complaints about heavy-handed house-to-house searches but that escaped prisoners were also masquerading as officers, sowing confusion.

Deby appointed his close ally Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour, previously mines and energy minister, as defence minister on Friday in a further bid to tighten security.

Nassour effectively took joint control with Deby of military operations in Chad after the killing of its armed forces chief outside N'Djamena on Feb. 1 as rebels advanced on the capital.

A member of Deby's Zaghawa ethnic group, Nassour also acted as the visible head of government in the tense hours when the president was holed up in his palace during two days of fighting in the city during the Feb. 2-3 rebel attack.

GUNMEN BLOCK DARFUR REFUGEES

Since their lightning assault on N'Djamena in a 3,000-strong convoy, the insurgents have withdrawn to the eastern border region with Sudan's Darfur, where aid workers are trying to care for hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians.

U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said armed men had stopped a group of families fleeing Darfur from boarding its trucks in the Birak border area of Chad this week, while other refugees due to be collected had moved away for fear of attacks.

"The situation is so serious that our representative in Chad is now at the border trying to find a solution to this problem, which is leaving the refugees extremely exposed and vulnerable," UNHCR said in a statement.

Chad threatened on Monday to expel new refugees arriving from Darfur, saying their presence was triggering insecurity and calling on the international community to take them elsewhere.

Prime Minister Nouradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye said the influx of refugees into eastern Chad risked becoming a "bone of contention" with Sudan and said that if the international community did not relocate them, it would do so.

EUFOR, whose deployment was interrupted by the rebel assault on N'Djamena, has a U.N. mandate to protect more than half a million Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadian civilians in Chad's barren eastern border regions.

But the rebels have warned EU member states not to contribute troops, saying the force will not be neutral because it is dominated by former colonial power France.

They accuse France, which is contributing more than half of the 3,700 EUFOR soldiers, of using tanks and helicopters to help Deby beat off their assault. France says it helped resupply the Chadian army but denies direct involvement in fighting.

---