Sudan’s militia killed 40 People in Eastern Chad – Amnesty

Oct 21, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Sudanese militia have killed at least 40 people over the past 10 days in attacks on dozens of villages in neighboring Chad, the human rights group Amnesty International said.

Government spokesman Hourmadji Musa Doumgor said Saturday that he had no information about the fighting.

“Over the last 10 days, close to a dozen villages in eastern Chad have been attacked, with at least 40 people killed,” Amnesty International said in statement released late Friday.

The London-based organization said that, according to information it had obtained, some 3,000 villagers in eastern Chad had fled their homes in the past week either because their village had been attacked or because they expected it to be attacked.

“Fleeing villagers described the attackers as Janjaweed wearing Sudanese army uniforms,” the statement said.

“We warned that these attacks were likely to resume once the rainy season ended, and now they have started, as we predicted,” Kate Gilmore, the executive deputy secretary general of Amnesty International, said in the statement.

“These attacks could have been avoided if the Chadian government and the international community had listened to earlier warnings and acted in advance to protect civilians in eastern Chad,” Gilmore said.

The Janjaweed militia of Arab nomads in Sudan’s western region of Darfur have in the past been accused of attacking villages in eastern Chad because some of the villagers are members of the same tribes as ethnic Africans in Darfur, where African rebels rose against the Arab-dominated central government in 2003.

When that rebellion started, Sudan has been accused of unleashing a fierce military repression – and of letting the Janjaweed commit atrocities against African villagers in Darfur.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in the ongoing fighting and an estimated 2.5 million people have fled their homes.

(AP)