Time has come to act over troubled Darfur : Chad’s Deby
NDJAMENA, Jan 30 (AFP) — Chadian President Idriss Deby said that his government was to make another attempt to bring peace to the troubled region of Darfur in the wake of a bombardment by Sudanese planes of a border town there.
“We consider that as we have been chosen as a mediator by the two parties the moment has come for us to play our role to bring peace back to the region,” Deby told journalists at the airport here on his return from a visit to France.
Rebels in Darfur launched a rebellion to protest against alleged government neglect of the semi-desert region in the west of the country. Clashes have intensified since peace talks in Chad collapsed on December 16, and so far the rebellion has cost about 3,000 lives.
The violence has also forced about 100,000 people to flee into the east of Chad. Some 670,000 have been displaced within Sudan itself.
The Chadian leader would not be drawn on the bombing by the Sudanese air force of its side of a town that straddles the border with Sudan on Thursday which left at least three people dead.
Earlier, however, Chad’s Foreign Minister Nagoum Yamassoum stressed that the bombing of the town of Tine, home to over a thousand Sudanese refugees from Darfur, was not deliberate and described it only as an “incident”.
The attack on Tine, which is split between Chad and Sudan, was the first incident on Chad’s side of the border since Khartoum started air attacks on positions held by rebels, who have been fighting the Sudanese authorities since February 2003.
“Thursday’s bombing in the town of Tine was in no way a deliberate act,” Yamassoum told AFP.
“We do not want to speak of a deliberate act or provocation to bring the war towards Chad,” he said.
Meanwhile, an offical with the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF – Doctors Without Borders), said three people had been killed in the bombing, including a two-year-old child, and 14 others wounded.
Sudanese armed forces said they regained control of their country’s side of Tine without a fight on Thursday from the rebel Movement of Justice and Equality (MJE). All the town’s inhabitants have fled as a result of the conflict.
The official from MSF, Sonia Peyrassol, said that the situation “has been calm since yesterday” in the Tine region, on both sides of the border.
Yamassoum said that after entering the Sudanese side of the border town, the head of Sudan’s army visited a Chadian military official to express regret over the bombing and stressed Khartoum’s cooperation with Chad.
Sudanese armed forces, whose Antonov planes have been regularly bombing the region over the past days, dropped 11 bombs Thursday on Tine, with seven falling on the Chadian side, MSF said.