Chad violence sending civilians into Sudan’s Darfur – UN

Feb 28, 2006 (GENEVA) — Fighting between soldiers and rebels in eastern Chad is sending civilians fleeing across the border into Sudan’s Darfur, site of one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

The “worrisome new development” is “further evidence of the spreading insecurity that now straddles this increasingly insecure region,” UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told reporters.

Chad hosts about 300,000 refugees who fled the three-year conflict between rebels and Sudanese government forces and militias in Darfur. Sudan has accused Chad of harboring Darfur rebels, while Chad has said Sudan backs Chadian insurgents.

In early February, Sudan and Chad signed a Libya-brokered accord pledging to deny refuge to each other’s rebel groups and to normalize diplomatic relations. But little progress has been made since in easing tensions. AU-mediated talks aimed at ending the Darfur fighting also have stalled.

Last year, scores of defectors from the Chadian army joined a number of Chadian rebel groups based in the area bordering Darfur. In December, Chad’s army repulsed two main rebel groups that tried to take the eastern Chad town of Adre.

Pagonis said Chadians fleeing the Adre region have cited that attack and further fighting between rebels and Chadian government troops over the last two months as the reason they left.

An indeterminate number of Chadians has joined a group of at least 8,000 people gathered around the Darfur border villages of Galu and Azaza, she said, adding “a small number of new arrivals are still reported daily” at makeshift settlements in the area. Others are believed to have fled to relatives living in the Galu area. Most of the Chadians in Sudan are women and children.

UNHCR is trying to determine which people returning to Sudan were Chadians and if they should be considered asylum seekers, Pagonis said.

At least 180,000 people have died in Darfur and some 2 million have been displaced since decades of tribal clashes over land and water erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003. The Sudanese government is accused of using ethnic Arab militias in a scorched earth policy against Darfur rebels, some of whom draw support from ethnic African villages.

(ST/AP)