By Pap Saine

BANJUL, March 23 (Reuters) - Gambia said on Thursday its former defence chief, accused of planning to overthrow the government, may have fled to neighbouring Senegal and it was questioning 18 other senior security officials over the plot.

JAMMEH WITH SIR DAWDA, A MAN

HE TOPPLED HIS GOVERNMENT!!!!

Authorities in the tiny West African country said on Wednesday they had uncovered a coup plot in its advanced stages led by Colonel Ndure Cham, former chief of defence staff, and a group of army officers.

"The leader of Tuesday's abortive attempted coup ... is reported to have crossed into Casamance, in Senegal," President Yahya Jammeh's office said in a statement read on state radio.

"The government ... has informed the Senegalese authorities and is counting on their continuous cooperation and support to apprehend and hand over the fugitive to the Gambian authorities," the statement said.

Senegalese government officials were not immediately available to comment.

The Gambian authorities said they were interrogating 18 people over the suspected coup plot, including 12 army officers, two former top officials of the National Intelligence Agency and the security manager of the country's main airport.

The government named new defence and intelligence chiefs on Wednesday in an apparent purge of the top security posts in the impoverished former British colony, which depends on peanut farming, fishing and tourism for its livelihood.

Banjul, the country's sleepy riverside capital, was calm but soldiers armed with assault rifles stepped up security checks, searching cars coming into the capital.

Jammeh, who seized power in Gambia in a bloodless coup in 1994, is expected to seek a third elected term in elections due in October 2006. He cut short a trip to Mauritania late on Tuesday and returned home because of the suspected plot.

Opponents accuse Jammeh of a range of human rights abuses as well as rigging previous elections. He opened his campaign for the 2001 presidential polls by saying he had already won and threatening to shoot anyone who disrupted polling.